Mushrooms can form words and sentences

Elizabeth Hlavinka (Grunge, 5/17/22); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Mushrooms can form words and sentences in a bizarre way

Mushrooms embedded in Buddhist art

Some mycologists (people who study fungi) believe we are just scratching the surface of the many useful purposes for mushrooms.

Studies from Paul Stamets, a mycologist and entrepreneur based in the Pacific Northwest, have shown mycelium and fungi can be used to restore polluted soil, ward off insects in farming, and treat smallpox (TED Talk).

The fungal kingdom is one of wonders: Some mushrooms make their own wind to ensure their spores are sent far and wide for reproduction. Plants talk to each other using a fungal internet to communicate underground about nearby water sources and nutrients, as well as to warn neighbors of nearby predators.

Mushrooms communicate all around us (Gaia).

It seems only natural that mushrooms may be able to communicate with each other, too.

Just last month, a group of researchers undertook a project to determine not only whether mushrooms can "talk" to one another, but the nature of the language they might be using. 

Murmuring mycelium

This is the mycelium, the fungal mycorrhizal network (© KYTan/Shutterstock)

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The Sacred Mushroom (John M. Allegro)

Mushrooms are connected through a complex underground network of neuron-like structures called a mycorrhizal network or mycelium (nationalforests.org).

This network is also what connects plants underground to help them communicate with one another to ward off noxious pests and ensure nutrients are evenly distributed.

Mycelium, the thread-like structures within the network, are even being used to develop meat alternatives (Comstock's Magazine).

According to The Guardian, fungi have been shown to communicate using "words" through this underground mycelium network. For example...

One researcher from the University of the West of England named Andrew Adamatzky was curious to determine if these murmuring mycelia were communicating in recognizable patterns, like that of human speech or a wolf pack (All That's Interesting).

Mushroom vocabulary

An alphabet like Sanskrit's 50+ characters?

To test this, Adamatzky put microelectrodes into four species of mushrooms — enoki, split gill, ghost, and caterpillar fungi — to determine the patterns of electrical signals they were sending back and forth, according to The Guardian.

What he found was that the fungi electrical pulses came in groups and were triggered by external stimuli. In fact, mushrooms could send a variety of up to 50 "words" in their vocabulary and that the "distributions of fungal word lengths match that of human languages," according to the research published in Royal Society Open Science.

For example, each mushroom word had an average length of 5.97 letters, versus the English language with an average of 4.8 letters (allthatsinteresting.com). The split gill mushrooms, which dissolve decaying wood, were the most eloquent "speakers," with the most complex sentences of electrical pulses of any fungi tested, explains The Guardian.

Adamatzky told The Guardian this could be a means of communicating location, like a howl of a wolf pack, or the appearance of new food, like plants communicating to share nutrients.

Of course, we're [or at least most of us are] a long way from speaking mushroom and interpreting just what these signals mean, but one thing was proven in this research: The signals were not random.

Just like sun-dependent (chlorophyll) plants have recently been thought to be more sentient than once thought, perhaps mushrooms are, too. More

There is a Psychedelic Sangha (Awareness Project/Dharma Buddhist Meditation)

• Scientists grow plants in lunar soil – and find bad news
• The unusual way plants communicate with each other
• The Might of Mycelium (comstocksmag.com)
• The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate (wired)
• Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words,’ scientist claims (The Guardian)