Fungarium: Welcome to the Museum

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Dozens of claims are made for medicinal mushroom products. The Bristol Fungarium, for example, sells extracts of fungi that it says relieve anxiety, prevent wrinkle formation, stabilise blood pressure and ease hot flushes. From heart health and type 2 diabetes to allergies and cancers, the list of ailments that mushrooms are said to alleviate is long. But are these claims supported by scientific evidence? Or are medicinal mushrooms just the latest fad? BBC Radio 4 presenter Sheila Dillon recently revealed she has taken mushroom supplements after her cancer treatment. Photograph: BBC

Ester Gaya is a senior research leader at Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England. She began her career in mycology in Spain and lived in the US before settling in the UK. She has spent the past twenty years researching fungi and is especially fascinated by lichens and their evolutionary process. Hay en el mundo de los hongos un verdadero apartado de terror. Los hongos no solo pueden infectar o enfermar a otros organismos, como los insectos, sino que en algunas ocasiones pueden liberar sustancias químicas capaces de manipular el cerebro de ellos y tomar el control de su cuerpo al más parecido estilo "zombi". The illustrations are gorgeous, of course, but there isn't even the smallest attempt at least some sense of proportion; plus - even thought this is a completely personal problem, I admit it - I find that this kind of encyclopaedic books work much better with actual photos than with drawings. After all, wouldn't it be much easier to recognize a fungus in real life if you firstly saw it in a photo compared to a drawing, no matter how beautiful and accurate? I understand that recognizing fungi in the wild is not the main aim of the book, but I still feel like I would have learned much more from real life photos. Aunque los hongos son un grupo de organismos (reino) que no pertenece ni a las plantas ni a los animales, contrariamente a lo que podríamos pensar, están más emparentados con estos últimos. Contienen quitina, que es similar a la queratina del cabello y piel de los humanos; no producen sus nutrientes, como las plantas y la fotosíntesis, sino que deben engullirlos de materia orgánica. ¿Quizá por eso serán tan recurridos en las dietas vegetarianas?Created in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the captivating and fascinating text is written by Kew mycologists David L. Hawksworth, Laura M. Suz, Pepijn W. Kooij, Kare Liimatainen, Tom Prescott, Lee Davies and Ester Gaya. Los líquenes son posiblemente una de las relaciones más exitosas que existen en la naturaleza y se deben a una asociación entre un hongo y un alga o cianobacteria. De esta relación, el hongo, por decirlo de una manera, se hace del poder de la fotosíntesis y se beneficia de los azúcares producidos en esta relación. The second book, Fungarium, in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is written by the Kew mycology team and illustrated by Katie Scott – the artist behind Animalium and Botanicum in the same series. The book is the second title that Big Picture Press has created in partnership with Kew, the first, Botanicum, published in 2o16 and was written by Kew’s Director of Science, Kathy Willis. The Fungarium was founded in 1879 with the donation of Rev Miles J Berkeley’s personal collection of around 30,000 specimens (including 6,000 type specimens).

So far, Emily and James have been well-introduced to the intricacies of the Fungarium’s archive and reference system. They are trained on the camera station within the Fungarium

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Under UK law, food labelling cannot “attribute to any foodstuff the property of preventing, treating or curing a human disease”. Such claims fall under medicines regulations and require marketing authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). A spokesperson for the MHRA said it had received no marketing applications for products containing lion’s mane, turkey tail, reishi, cordyceps, chaga or shiitake, and that a number of retailers had been warned about making health claims for mushroom products and use of the term “medicinal mushrooms”. Los hongos están de moda, aunque siento que es más por el tema de las drogas y su carácter lúdico, y menos por las razones que me gustarían. A digitised collection can be accessed online for free by researchers from anywhere in the world. It helps make research more efficient by sharing our knowledge with as many people as possible.

Katie Scott graduated from University of Brighton in 2011. Her work draws influences from traditional medical and botanical illustration, both in aesthetic and subject matter. It also plays with the ideas of scientific uncertainty and speculation, fabricating the inner and outer workings of the world. Her illustrations depict a familiar yet fantasy vision of plants, humans, and minerals.Veteran broadcaster Sheila Dillon, who was diagnosed with cancer of the bone marrow in 2011, shared some personal information while presenting a recent episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme. She began taking mushroom supplements after discovering that patients in Japan were given them to help deal with the effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and that there was, she told listeners, “a good deal of evidence” that they did. The last time she saw her oncologist, he told her she was “in danger of becoming a super-responder”.

Holding over 1.25 million dried specimens, Kew’s Fungarium collection is the largest, one of the oldest and most scientifically important, in the world.

Fungarium, much like the other compendiums from the Welcome To The Museum series, is stunningly illustrated and full of well researched, scintallating facts that will prove fascinating and useful in turn. Learn here about how fungus works, how mushroom is technically not a true scientific term, and about how fungus is one of those kingdoms we know so little on that we have discovered roughly only around 5% of what scientists believe to be the true number of fungus species on planet earth. Who isn't excited about fungus? Unfortunately too many people, which is why I am so pleased that this book exists. A favourite Christmas present, this has left be with the New Year's resolution of becoming the best amateur mycologist I can be - something I had forgotten mattered to me so much despite a favourite series of unfortunate events book being The Grim Grotto (no spoilers on that one here - that is for another time). Big Picture Press, an imprint of Templar Publishing, is partnering with the Science Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to publish two new titles in its hugely successful Welcome to the Museum series. The first of the two books, Planetarium, in partnership with the Science Museum, is written by UCL Professor of Astrophysics, Raman Prinja and illustrated by The Book of Dust’s Chris Wormell. Set to publish later this year, the book will herald a likely surge in space publishing for the moon-landing anniversary in 2019.