Recent reading

[luzula]

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (2023)
For book club; I listened to the audiobook. This was...perfectly okay? But did not really wow me. I think part of that was the setting: I could not really suspend my disbelief that humans could fuck up Earth to such an extent that it would be a better alternative to move to Jupiter. And the plot kept bringing up issues of ecology, so it was difficult to ignore.

Saying No to a Farm-Free Future by Chris Smaje (2023)
Now that I think of it, this book and the one above are kind of in conversation with each other, about how possible it is for humans to survive without Earth's ecosystems? I don't know that it was worth reading for me, since I already follow the author's blog, and had already got the gist of it. But anyway, it's arguing against ecomodernist claims that it would be possible (or desirable) to feed humanity on manufactured food from factories. Mainly on the basis that it would cost far too much energy in a future which is already likely to be less energy-rich than today, but it also brings up various social aspects.

I also read a Swedish book about the ground-living fungi of sandy pine forests, but probably no one in my DW circle is interested in that one.

Comments

[sanguinity]

*goes and looks it up in my Olympic/Cascade natural history book [1] so I'm not doing this entirely from memory*

Douglas fir also has mycorrhizal relationships with fungi, where the fungi suppress the tree's root hairs (1mm diameter) and sustitute their own (.003mm), providing a much more efficient absorptive surface area, making nitrogen and phosphorous available that the tree would not otherwise be able to access, and in some cases boring into solid rock and providing nutrients that way. The fungi sheaths on the roots can also protect from bacterial infection and parasitic fungi, secreting antibiotics against the one and selective toxins against the other.

The trees, in addition to supplying carbohydrates to the fungi, also provide water during the dry summer months (the trees being more deeply rooted than the fungi network extends). The tree-fungi network also provides carbohydrates to seedlings and saplings that are shaded-out by the adult overstory, keeping them alive until they are big enough to donate carbohydrates in their own turn. There's also a whole class of non-green plants (including some orchids) that never produce carbohydrates of their own, but live off the fungal carbohydrate interchange for their entire life cycle. (Commentary by me: these plants are eerie and cool and I always love spotting one. They're pretty much just a stalk and flowers, and are often a translucent white or red.)

[1] Dave Matthews, Cascade-Olympic Natural History: A Trailside Reference, 2nd edition, 1999.

[regshoe]

I agree about the non-photosynthetic orchids! I've seen bird's-nest orchid (Neottia nidus-avis) in a beech wood; I have heard legends of but never seen ghost orchid (Epipogium aphyllum), which is very cool and beautifully eerie in both looks and habits.

[luzula]

I have seen Neottia nidus-avis a few times, but it's rare in Sweden. I have also seen Epipogium aphyllum, which we call "lady of the forest" (skogsfru). It's so beautiful! But Corallorhiza trifida is a more common such orchid in the boreal forest, which I've seen lots of times.

[regshoe]

E. aphyllum is very rare here—I would love to see it! I have not seen C. trifida, which seems to be mostly not found in England, either—that's another beautiful one.

[luzula]

Cool, thanks! A lot of that is common to temperate and boreal forests in Sweden as well, I think. Mycorrhiza is an amazing thing!