For a long time, mushrooms were considered like plants (yes, most often, they sit in one place, do not meow, and do not ask for food), and some species were even counted among animals and minerals. Well, everyone was wrong. Mushrooms are just mushrooms.
In reality, of course, everything is more complicated. Botanist Oleksii Kovalenko talks about this in his new book. What do Pliny the Elder and mushrooms have in common? What mushrooms did the "snowman" carry with him? The dancing plague, the witch hunt, and how are mushrooms involved in all this? How much is the most expensive mushroom in the world, and how did mushrooms contribute to the potato famine in Europe? What mushrooms grew on the walls of the 4th power unit, and who lost the Australian athletes?
And the author will also talk about LSD and psilocybin, mushrooms that are not champignons, how your morning cup of coffee is threatened by a parasitic fungus, whether it is possible to make meat from mushrooms, and what is kombucha.
This is a story about mushrooms and their role in the life of our planet because somehow, it happened that on Earth, it is not difficult to find places where mushrooms grow - it is more difficult to find a place where they do not exist.
Oleksii Kovalenko is the author of the books "Fruits vs. Vegetables" and "Alien Plants". Works at the National Natural Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Promotes botany - runs a blog and YouTube channel, "Dovkolabotanika", page "Botanist in sneakers", and writes for the Facebook page of the Natural History Museum, where he talks about reptiles, apples, minerals, and dinosaurs.
