Pondering Pyrophilousness
The fungi are one of the first to sing the song of renewal after fire.
With their brilliant colors and bizarre forms, they arrive swiftly to paint the homogenized, blackened landscape with dazzling diversity and return a sense of hope to the charred Earth.
Hiding for years, possibly decades inside of the tissues of living plants, only to complete their life cycle after the plant is exposed to fire. Most of what we see are Ascomycetes, the Phyla that contains cup fungi and Yeats, one of the oldest lineages of fungi. These are the fungi that are also seen first to grow after other major environmental upheavals such as volcano eruptions or landslides. Is it that their ancientness contributes to their adaptability, and their ability to be quick-responsing pioneer species after a major ecological disturbance?
They are such potent reminders that this is just a small part of a long, ancient story. They bestow a sense of unfathomable ecological depth that were only seeing a small snapshot of.
The Earth is in constant flux. It’s systems and cycles are in series of ceaseless, radical alteration. Landscapes have been burning for eons for many different reasons, and fungi have been doing this alchemical magic for millennia, revealing their true talents of resiliency and adaptability on barren landscapes following ecological disturbances. They come unabashed, thriving in what seems uninhabitable, making home in the inconceivable. Turning rock and soot into soil and paving the way for ecological succession and regeneration to take hold.
Above is compilation of photos taken just days after first rains fell on the burn sites i’ve been growing in relationship with through my mycoremediation work and research. (find out more here)
The pyrophillous fungi have so much to teach us about post-fire regeneration, how to be in relationship with these lands and how to show up for their healing. The way their colors reflect the bright orange hues fire like the orange Anthrocobia. The way that they call in the bryophytes, aid in moisture retention in the soil, provide the first niblets of food for micoarthopods to begin re-establishing populations which facilitates the return of healthy, functional soil biology. This in return gives way to the germination of native seed banks (many of those seeds which rely on fire to germinate) creating the first waves of succession. Within weeks we see the reappearance of insects, amphibians, birds and larger mammals. Almost as if they anticipated this all along, as if fire were an old friend. Almost as if they were made for this.
Forever humbled and in awe by fungi’s miraculous resiliency, adaptability and capacity to thrive.
May we continue to watch you with diligence and humility, listening in all sincerity, to the secrets you hold in paving the way for a future based in altruism, collaboration, and the celebration and proliferation of diversity.
If this interests you, I encourage you to look further down the rabbit hole via these resources on pyrophilous fungi:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7384086/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00275514.2020.1740381?journalCode=umyc20
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/681345
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3753124
https://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/ecology-fire.html