Coral head? Nope. Fungus! Hen of the Woods, perhaps, though I’m no mycologist and am happy to be corrected. (It popped up on my wooded property in central Virginia. It’s the size of a soccer ball. Impressive.) What I do know is Nature loves to repeat herself. If a shape works nicely in one environment, don’t be surprised if it crops up elsewhere. Evolution is like that, recycling good ideas, creating patterns. Fun fact: The largest living organism on earth today is a fungus in Oregon. It lives just beneath the ground and covers about 3.7 square miles. It weighs as much as thirty-five thousand tons. That’s one big shroom.
A few other fungal facts: the stuff is more genetically similar to animals than plants, apparently fungi have chemicals in their cell walls that for some reason lobsters and crabs also have, and a spoonful of soil might have thousands of different fungi within. So many are unknown/unnamed! Mycologists, get to it!
Sadly, I don’t like mushrooms (to eat). Never have. Something about that mild-dirt flavor and rubbery springy squeaky sponginess doesn’t work for me. I can manage a few button ‘shrooms in Thai soup and maybe a nibble of a Portobello burger, but that’s about it. (True story: In Amsterdam we bought the “other kind” of ‘shrooms and I couldn’t stand to chew them (see above) so I swallowed mine whole and had a bummer of a regular day. Those who chewed saw many colors and heard music that I missed. Apparently, the good stuff needs coaxing out.)
I’d like to feel differently, because mushrooms are fascinating and sometimes hilarious, and of course the ones that aren’t toxic are super healthy (or wonderfully mind bending).
I’ll keep trying.
Meanwhile: Shrooooooommms!