Psychedelics, mind control, radiation-eating: The secret superpowers of fungi - Max G. Levy

This story was supported by a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center. Learn more about their work here.

In 1735, Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus went to work, to systematically name and organize all of Earth’s organisms. But there was one group that gave him immense trouble: his 24th class of plants. Linnaeus had divided the kingdom into classes based on how they reproduced. And in this final class, Class 24, Linneaus grouped all those he couldn’t differentiate—seemingly flowerless, seedless plants with no apparent reproductive organs. It would include plants like ferns and mosses, but also fungi. Linnaeus expected Earth to have fewer than 10,000 species of plants—including fungi.

Biologists mistakenly classified fungi as plants until well into the 20th century. As ecologist Robert Whittaker wrote in 1964: "Convenience still places the fungi in the plant kingdom in many textbooks. It may be fair, however, to observe the extent to which this is a position of convenience; for the fungi are a separate, major group of organisms of different origin, different direction of evolution, and different organization in adaptation to a different primary nutrition from that of the plants."

As we learned in this video, fungi are a kingdom in their own right. In 1969, Whittaker introduced a 5-kingdom system to classify life that designated fungi as distinct. And it’s a huge kingdom at that: Scientists estimate that somewhere between 2 and 12 million species of fungi remain undiscovered.

The weird world of fungi contains many more unique species not covered in the video. Panelus stipcus grows on rotting wood and glows as bright as fireflies, attracting bugs. Scientists have isolated the fungus Wallemia ichthyophaga, from man-made ponds used to manufacture salt. Wallemia produces the chemical glycerol—a thick alcohol that, when amassed within a cell, prevents water from seeping out via osmosis.

Fungal resilience can also reap destruction. The spores of Fusarium oxysporum can invade the roots of plants like banana trees and tomatoes. The spores plug a plant's vasculature, stealing nutrients and blocking water flow. The plant wilts and dies. During the 1950s, an outbreak of Fusarium oxysporum infections, known as Panama Disease, virtually wiped out an entire variety of banana. But conditions aren’t always ideal for Fusarium to live its best life as a parasite, so its dark, thick, melanin-rich chlamydospores survive dormant for decades in soil, through heat, dehydration.

But fungal survival doesn’t only come at the expense of others. In Chile’s Atacama desert, the driest nonpolar place on Earth, fungi support an unexpected oasis of large trees bearing fruit like apricot, pear, and chañar. Researchers have journeyed there to collect soil samples, hoping to understand how fungi help these crops survive. They believe the oasis exists thanks to species of mycorrhizal fungi beneath Atacama’s fruit trees—species that live symbiotically along plant roots.