![Olfactory illustration by Leya Tess Featuring: Truffles [Tuber gibbosum], Garlic [Allium sativum], Basket Stinkhorn [Clathrus ruber], Golden Chanterelle [Cantharellus formosus], Western Matsutake [Tricholoma murrillianum], Rose [Rosa chinensis], and…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a8e18cbb078699864fdba57/1617050487492-U9M6TE1E90HV3QVXJJM7/Future_Olfactories_F.jpeg)
Olfactory illustration by Leya Tess
Featuring: Truffles [Tuber gibbosum], Garlic [Allium sativum], Basket Stinkhorn [Clathrus ruber], Golden Chanterelle [Cantharellus formosus], Western Matsutake [Tricholoma murrillianum], Rose [Rosa chinensis], and scat.
Summary
Mushrooms that smell? Fungi can be pungent, provocative, and at times irresistible.
While we might not always recognize it, we're in constant chemical communication with the world around us through olfaction. For those with the senses to discern them, aromas, perfumes, stinks, and stenches can all convey useful information. Some scents are warnings, and others are deterrents, but the most alluring are expert portraits of our animal fascinations, honed through evolution to attract, captivate, and compel.
In this episode, we stop to smell the Russulas – examining the fascinating fragrances of Kingdom Fungi, with the help of Michael Hathaway, Merlin Sheldrake, and Anicka Yi.
Want to hear more from our meeting with the Titan Arum? That’s only on our Patreon bonus feed.
The Mushroom Smelling Wheel
A catalogue of fragrances observed in fungi
by Isabelle Kirouac and Willoughby Arevalo
© all rights reserved
Artists Statement
This wheel is an experiential tool for supporting participants to recognize, identify, analyze, appreciate and discuss the wide range of aromas emitted by the diversity of macrofungi (mushrooms). Many mushroom lovers will habitually bring a mushroom to their nose (or vice versa) before taking a good look at it with their eyes. This demonstrates the usefulness of aroma to mushroom identification, but also the power that smell has to create associations, memories and a sense of familiarity.
We conceived and developed the wheel collaboratively with input from personal experience, mushroom field guides, and participants who have engaged with the wheel. Indeed, it is an ever-evolving catalogue of smells, and if you have experienced distinct mushroom smells not listed here, please let us know. Smell is interpreted in layers – personally, culturally and contextually, and this wheel continues to grow as more people and fungi interact with it in different contexts.
The first iteration of this wheel was created in 2018 as an art installation in residency at the Guapamacátaro Art & Ecology Center in P’urhépecha Territory/Michoacán, Mexico, where we drew the broad categories on a tablecloth. Rather than writing out each specific smell, we filled 44 small ceramic cups with the reminiscent substances, ranging from iodine to radishes to rubber bands, for participants to smell, optionally blindfolded. We have since made another cloth version, which you see replicated here. We often share it through a playful activity, inviting participants to smell mushrooms, discuss their aromas, and place them on the wheel. We have facilitated this experience with participants on mushroom forays, in schools, in community art projects, and at mushroom festivals such as the New Moon Mycology Summit (Mohawk Territory/New York, 2019), and the Sunshine Coast Mushroom and Seaweed Festival (Shíshálh Territory/British Columbia, 2019).
For more of our work, or to get in touch, visit Isabelle’s homepage & art and fungi.org
Show Notes
This episode features Merlin Sheldrake, Anicka Yi, and Michael Hathaway
Music by Cagpie, My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt, H Takahashi, Hotspring, You’re Me, Soda Lite, DJ Obake, Hidden Sky, C. Diab, and Sunfish Moon Light.
This episode was produced by Mendel Skulski and Adam Huggins.
Special thanks to Willoughby Arevalo, Lucia Pietroiusti, Robin Kort, Yasaman Sheri, Paul Kroeger, Andrew Philips, and the Vancouver Mycological Society.
This episode includes audio recorded by Aarrnnoo protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses, and accessed through the Freesound Project.
Citations
Arora, D. (2008). The Houses That Matsutake Built. Economic Botany (62) 278.
Bloom, J. (2020). Skatole - A Natural Monstrosity In Perfume, Parliaments, Produce And Poop. American Council on Science and Health.
Gregory, A. (2017). Anicka Yi Is Inventing a New Kind of Conceptual Art. New York Times, Style Magazine.
Kerekes, J. (2010). What’s all the stink about? Mycena News [Accessed via MycoWeb]
Krause, B. (1993). The Niche Hypothesis: A virtual symphony of animal sounds, the origins of musical expression and the health of habitats. Soundscape Newsletter (World Forum for Acoustic Ecology).
Majid, A., Burenhult, N. (2014) Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. Cognition (130) 2, pp. 266-270
Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. Penguin Random House.
Tolaas, S. (2011). An Alphabet for the Nose. Journal for Artistic Research.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and iNaturalist.
If you like what we do, and you want to help keep it ad-free, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Pay-what-you-can (as little as $1/month) to get access to bonus monthly mini-episodes, stickers, patches, a community Discord chat server, and more. This season, we’re taking a tour of some of our Seaweed Sojourners, with the help of Josie Iselin.
Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil- Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 0:02
You're listening to season three of Future Ecologies
Adam Huggins 0:08
How many people do you think are here?
Mendel Skulski 0:11
Probably in the line with us? 250 maybe?
Adam Huggins 0:16
I think there's more than that.
Adam Huggins 0:17
I think there's 300-400 people here.
Mendel Skulski 0:19
Amazing
Adam Huggins 0:22
They're all here to see a plant.
Mendel Skulski 0:25
This is marketing triumph. Hey, we've got this flower that's almost like poop and dead things. Come check it out.
Adam Huggins 0:31
It worked on us.
Mendel Skulski 0:33
But we're nerds!
Adam Huggins 0:33
It doesn't take much. I mean, I'll hike up a mountain to see a tiny, tiny flower that most people would never notice.
Mendel Skulski 0:40
This is not exactly an inconspicuous flower.
Mendel Skulski 0:47
So, Adam, do you remember this?
Adam Huggins 0:49
Of course, I remember this.
Adam Huggins 0:51
This was a long time ago, though. Like way before Coronavirus, which should be obvious because of the crowds, right?
Mendel Skulski 0:57
Yeah, this was actually exactly a week before we launched our very first episode. Back in 2018.
Adam Huggins 1:04
Wow. It's been a minute. So we were standing in this long line at the Bloedel conservatory in Vancouver to see this really unusual tropical flower that had attracted people from miles around – because it stank!
Mendel Skulski 1:19
And that flower was?
Adam Huggins 1:21
The Titan Arum, which I believe is the largest inflorescence in the world, a veritable tower of flower, a skunk cabbage on steroids. The Amorphophallus titanum.
Mendel Skulski 1:33
Yeah, some of the folks who were there told us that they felt the smell was kind of like cat urine or hot dumpster. Or according to a couple people who apparently were speaking from experience, dead rat.
Adam Huggins 1:46
Yeah, a couple of people there were swearing by dead rat. To me, it smelled a little bit like body odor.
Mendel Skulski 1:51
That's, you know, that's funny. Well, I think we'll get back to that.
Adam Huggins 1:53
Is that right? So what are we... Why have you brought us back here?
Mendel Skulski 1:59
Well, if you remember, when we were standing in line, we got to talking about some kind of stinky coincidences. To be specific how there are mushrooms that smell a lot like this plant, and that also share some other qualities...
Adam Huggins 2:15
Stinkhorns!
Mendel Skulski 2:16
Yeah, that are from the family Phallaceae.
Adam Huggins 2:19
There's a common thread there. If any of you missed it, it's the word phallus. So is it convergent evolution? Or is it just coincidence? That stinkhorns, which are really smelly mushrooms, and these flowers in the Arum family, like the Titan Arum, that they have this sort of undeniably phallic morphology, and they also stink to high heaven. Did you ever figure out the answer?
Mendel Skulski 2:47
No, I'm sorry. I got kind of distracted.
Adam Huggins 2:50
What? What were you distracted by?
Mendel Skulski 2:52
Would it shock you if I said mushrooms?
Adam Huggins 2:54
It wouldn't shock me in the slightest. So Mendel, is this going to be an episode about penis shaped mushrooms?
Mendel Skulski 3:03
No, I wanted to zoom out from just stinkhorns. For today's show, I've got a story about mushrooms and fungi, obviously. But more specifically, it's about a special chemical conversation that's happening between us and them. It's an episode about odors, delicious, nauseating, sometimes both and how these fragrances may be shaping worlds of their own.
Adam Huggins 3:30
Okay, wait a second. Do we need a disclaimer here? Like I assume we're going to be talking about sniffing mushrooms. And the last thing that we want is for anyone to poison themselves by accident. So is this episode going to be safe for all of the mycological novices out there,
Mendel Skulski 3:48
That's... that's probably a good idea. So there are a few caveats for observing mushrooms. Number one, don't touch mushrooms growing on animal remains. Or if you're in Australia or Asia, please don't touch a very distinctive looking mushroom called the poison fire coral.
Adam Huggins 4:06
I think I can manage that.
Mendel Skulski 4:08
Two, get to know what a rotten mushroom can look like. And maybe don't touch those. It's not dangerous. It's just less than fun. Three, try not to inhale huge amounts of spores. Like breathing any fine dust. They can irritate your lungs. And finally, if you are immunocompromised, there is one mushroom to avoid sniffing. That's Schizophyllum commune, or the Split Gill mushroom. Luckily, it's pretty easy to recognize, and the health impacts are rare.
Adam Huggins 4:42
But if you accidentally like pick up and touch a Destroying Angel, like just wash your hands and like don't worry about it, right?
Mendel Skulski 4:47
Yeah. Although you don't even necessarily need to pick a mushroom in order to smell it. But other than those few exceptions, as long as you don't actually swallow it, a mushroom can't hurt you. Not even deadly poisonous one. So don't eat it, but sniff away. There are practically as many different fungal odors as there are types of fungi.
Adam Huggins 5:10
And there are lots of types of fungi.
Mendel Skulski 5:11
Oh yes, we're going to meet just a few. And I encourage you to engage all of your senses.
Adam Huggins 5:19
Okay, as you were
Introduction Voiceover 5:22
Broadcasting from unceded, shared and asserted territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 5:57
To kick things off, a quick primer. Some of you listening might only know the mushrooms on your pizza, so I'll get you up to speed. For the rest of you, this will only take a minute.
Mendel Skulski 6:12
So a mushroom is just a small and temporary part of a fungus, which is a very different form of life than a plant or an animal. At the base of every mushroom are these root-like connections to the main body of the fungus. That structure is called the mycelium, which is a network of microscopic chains of cells, a branching web, or a matrix that grows inside of its food: in rotting wood, the leaf litter or in the soil, sometimes connected to the roots of trees. That hidden mycelium forms mushrooms in order to reproduce. More or less like an apple tree makes apples in order to carry its seeds. And so we sometimes refer to mushrooms as fruiting bodies. But instead of seeds, mushrooms produce spores, which are tiny, microscopic grains that float off into the wind and start a new mycelium somewhere else.
Mendel Skulski 7:15
With that, I want to turn to a particular edible mushroom. One whose unique aroma has captured the attention of millions of people and reshaped whole economies. This mushroom is any one of several related species of Tricholoma known collectively, as Matsutake,
Anicka Yi 7:36
I love Matsutake! It smells almost like a vegetal animal.
Merlin Sheldrake 7:43
It's so singular. And so striking.
Michael Hathaway 7:46
The most famous description in English is that it smells like a combination between some dirty socks and the kind of old fashioned candy that was called Red Hots. It's very cinnamon-y and spicy.
Mendel Skulski 8:03
This is Michael Hathaway.
Michael Hathaway 8:05
I'm a professor of cultural anthropology at Simon Fraser University. I'm part of a collective collaborative project with five other anthropologists, and we travel around the world to study the Matsutake mushroom – this wild mushroom and the kinds of social worlds that it brings into emergence. We are called the Matsutake Worlds Research Group.
Mendel Skulski 8:32
The funky, spicy smell of Matsutake is unmistakable. In Japan, the world capital of the Matsutake trade, it's thought of as the quintessential aroma of autumn. Historically, it was so prized that it was considered a sumptuary good, which could only be legally consumed by the aristocracy. Then prior to World War One, during a period of social and ecological change, known as the Meiji Restoration, widespread deforestation created opportunities for shade intolerant red pines. In these new pine forests, Matsutake flourished, plentiful enough to be enjoyed by common folk for the first time.
Michael Hathaway 9:17
Then slowly starting in the 50s and 60s, you just start to see the numbers wane.
Mendel Skulski 9:26
By the 70s and 80s, domestic production had fallen so far that Japanese scientists leaned on the nascent technology of GIS to map forests, soil types, and weather patterns around the world in the hopes of locating new sources of Matsutake. In these early days, prospecting for mushrooms was a covert operation like in Yunnan Province in southwestern China.
Michael Hathaway 9:52
There are stories in Yunnan about how they dressed up as butterfly collectors and they were going up into the forest, into the mountains. They had their butterfly nets and the police found them and asked them to open their bags and they were stuffed full of Matsutake.
Mendel Skulski 10:07
But despite the odd diplomatic hiccup, they were successful, finding Matsutake-producing regions in New Mexico, Turkey, Northern Europe, and here on the west coast of North America.
Michael Hathaway 10:20
They were able to make these predictions, and they've worked scientists working together with entrepreneurs. And what used to be almost a completely domestic market within 20 years became this huge pulsing global market, like this commodity chain where you're getting the mushrooms out in these remote forest and within 48 hours on the shelves or on the plates in Japan,
Mendel Skulski 10:46
The demand for Matsutake can be so extreme and the supply so variable, that prices can swing wildly, even over the course of a single day. Over the past few decades, pickers have been paid between $2 and $60 per pound, wholesale.
Adam Huggins 11:03
That's… that's a big range.
Mendel Skulski 11:05
Just wait. At its peak in 1993, pickers could sell top grade Matsutake, for $600 per pound. And yet, for many, it's not just about the money,
Michael Hathaway 11:18
Like with other mushrooms too, but maybe especially with Matsutake, there's this Matsutake fever that can take people over and pulls them up out of bed early in the morning and have them camping cold and creating this whole life for weeks on end. Even when the prices have been down to sometimes $2 a pound here. I mean they get to where it's just it really is not even paying for people's gas.
Adam Huggins 11:40
Getting swept up by this Matsutake fever sounds completely intoxicating.
Mendel Skulski 11:47
That's one word for it. And Matsutake fever isn't even limited to humans. Anna Tsing, one of Michael's collaborators, writes about reports of elk in Oregon who bloody their muzzles in the sharp pumice soils, in their own obsession with Matsutake.
Adam Huggins 12:09
Okay, so you're telling me that all of this excitement, this Matsutake fever is because of how this mushroom smells?
Mendel Skulski 12:17
Yeah, more or less.
Adam Huggins 12:19
I mean, maybe my sense of smell just isn't that strong. But I've I've never felt that way about a mushroom, as much as I love them. So, I mean, I guess I want to turn this around. Have you felt this strongly about a mushroom? Like are there mushroom odors that make you want to act like one of these elk?
Mendel Skulski 12:35
Well, I mean, I do love Matsutake. But one of my favorite mushrooms to smell is actually chanterelles. They don't smell that strong. But, you know, when you get a pile of them together, it's really obvious. They're really fruity. Like apricots.
Adam Huggins 12:52
Wow, I've picked a lot of chanterelles, but I've never experienced that. Apricots is not what you expect a mushroom to smell like.
Mendel Skulski 12:58
No, and that... that actually reminds me. I was being a little hyperbolic back at the beginning when I said that there are as many smells as there are mushrooms. And I guess I should walk that back a little bit. There definitely is a like a stereotypical earthy mushroom-y smell. And there are lots of mushrooms that make it.
Adam Huggins 13:17
But not all fungi have that smell?
Mendel Skulski 13:19
No. And there are just so many other fungal odors out there. There are mushrooms that smell like maple syrup, garlic, bleach, or or fish.
Adam Huggins 13:30
Shrimp mushrooms! That's a mushroom that I can identify from smell.
Mendel Skulski 13:34
Yeah, they are very fishy. And there are others that smell like creosote, rotten meat, watermelon rind, fenugreek, or licorice. And as you mentioned, right like these, these smells are so characteristic that they can become an important part of figuring out exactly what species a mushroom is – they become this identifying feature.
Adam Huggins 13:55
Okay, so theoretically, you could have two mushrooms that look exactly the same, but they smell different. And so you can identify them by smell. Right?
Mendel Skulski 14:03
Yeah. And the classic example is in the genus Agaricus, the same genus as grocery store button mushrooms. There are pretty similar looking species that can either smell like almonds, or like harsh chemicals.
Adam Huggins 14:17
Yes, and I have encountered some of these mushrooms and I have tried to figure out which are which based on smell and I gotta be honest, I've never been quite confident enough to really make that distinction. Of course, I like I feel like almonds kind of smell like cyanide. Anyway, they're pretty chemically.
Mendel Skulski 14:31
Yeah, fair enough. But by harsh chemicals. I mean, they can really smell like… like hot... road... tar. Like asphalt.
Adam Huggins 14:40
Right. Yeah, definitely not appetizing. No. Okay, so there's a number of mushrooms that smell pretty repellent, like asphalt or bleach or rotten meats. And so I guess we're admitting that maybe smelling mushrooms isn't always a pleasant experience, although as we know from the Amorphophallus people sometimes are really attracted to really bad smells. Just out of curiosity.
Mendel Skulski 15:06
Yeah, I mean, so much of that idea of pleasant and unpleasant is kind of a social construction anyways, right? Like, the way that people feel about cheese in different cultures or the way that people feel about perfumes and deodorants, right. Like, not every smell is for every person. And I think these mushrooms, and the Amorphophallus make that point really clearly that, that we can hold disgust and pleasure and excitement together at the same time, right?
Adam Huggins 15:36
Yeah, totally.
Mendel Skulski 15:37
And I do think that these mushrooms that are particularly singular and pungent and polarizing, those are the ones that we tend to obsess over. And in some cases even mythologize.
Adam Huggins 15:48
So is that what you think is happening with the Matsutake? That it like? It can both smell kind of like red hots, which are, you know, refreshing and also smell like sweaty gym socks, which are kind of gross? Is that what's so intriguing about their aroma? For people?
Mendel Skulski 16:04
Yeah, there's something about this mushroom that we can't even put into words, right? And that that might just be a problem with English. I understand that there are languages that do have more descriptive words for smells, like almost colors, whereas we are stuck with using these analogues: like red hots, like gym socks. But even so, there's something about the smell of Matsutake that hits us really deep in our animal being somewhere. Whether you like it or whether you hate it, there's something really compelling about it. It's not the only mushroom like this. There are mushrooms that just smell so ineffable, just so much like themselves, that they've become some of the most valuable food commodities in the whole world. Matsutake are one example. And another is truffles.
Adam Huggins 16:49
Truffles! I have to confess. So I have had Matsutake and so I understand a little bit of the obsession. But I have never gotten to experience truffles personally, although I have had some truffle oil, which was kind of gross actually.
Mendel Skulski 17:05
Aw I hope you get the chance to have a real truffle someday.
Adam Huggins 17:08
Me too.
Mendel Skulski 17:08
Yeah. Because the flavors that they use in truffle oil are actually not natural. They're mostly synthetic.
Adam Huggins 17:14
Well, that's typical.
Mendel Skulski 17:15
Yeah, but even though the smell of real truffles is usually more complex and variable than those synthetic oils, they're still pungent, and you know, you won't necessarily like them. They're overpowering, and, and polarizing. Right? And they can be fruity, funky muskie, and even dizzying like gasoline. And like Matsutake, I'd say that's for a very good reason.
Adam Huggins 17:40
And what would that reason be?
Mendel Skulski 17:42
Well, to help tell that story, there's someone else I'd like you to meet.
Merlin Sheldrake 17:49
So this is me introducing myself on the podcast. Okay, so then I would say that I am a biologist with a special interest in fungi, and the author of Entangled Life. Oh, yeah, my name is Martin Sheldrake.
Mendel Skulski 18:03
I wanted to speak with Merlin about his experiences with this notoriously odiferous morsel.
Merlin Sheldrake 18:11
There's a whole range of truffle, of course. There's 1000s of species of truffles, and they have very different odors.
Mendel Skulski 18:17
The first thing you need to know about truffles is that they're basically mushrooms that fruit underground. Some human truffle hunters are lucky enough to find them by their smell alone, but more often than not, it's done with the help of someone a little more nosy. Like a dog.
Merlin Sheldrake 18:34
I spent time hunting truffles in Italy. And there was this very amazing bit where the dog could smell the truffle and when you come closer to the, to the place where the dog has smelled the truffle and as the layers of soil are peeled back and the dog snorts and scrapes and there's a moment they smell the truffle before I saw it. And these truffles smells made so much more sense in their environment, in their context. It's very clear that this smell had evolved to stand out in this context, and it is clear that it worked in some kind of special olfactory harmony with the other fraying smells of leaf mold and the other autumnal smells in the wood. And it was tuned to the kind of factory pitch that it could really cut through.
Adam Huggins 19:24
The idea of an old factory pitch reminds me a little bit of Bernie Krause's Acoustic Niche hypothesis, which we talked about back in Episode 2.5. And that is that different animals tend to make sounds in an otherwise unused frequency band with little overlap. The reason being that if you want to be heard, or in this case smelled, you have to stand out from all the background noise,
Mendel Skulski 19:48
Right. Yeah, and and standing out is crucial for a truffle. Their lifecycle relies on their strong smell, ringing out to announce their presence,
Adam Huggins 19:57
Right. Because truffles Being mushrooms that fruit underground?
Mendel Skulski 20:02
Yeah, like little nuggets.
Adam Huggins 20:04
Yeah. These little nuggets don't get exposed to the wind. And so their spores can't travel very far on their own. They're kind of stuck in the dirt. Right?
Mendel Skulski 20:12
Exactly. Maybe it's a safe place to grow their fruit bodies. But those spores need to disperse, somehow. They want to get out and tour the world. So as Merlin puts it, the truffle has devised a lure.
Merlin Sheldrake 20:29
I mean, think about flowers. Flowers are lures. They attract pollinators, whether moths or bats or bees. And the pungent smells of truffles are an olfactory beacon, which summon animals, whether that be a shrew, or squirrel, or human or pig or dog, to drop whatever they're doing to locate the truffle, dig up the truffle, or to eat the truffle, and then to go away and deposit the truffle spores in its feces. And so in this case, it's very clear lure. The truffle's life depends on its ability to spread the spores and its ability to spread the spores depends on being able to attract an animal.
Mendel Skulski 21:10
The more irresistible a truffle smells to a hungry mammal, the more likely its genes are to survive and replicate. But hunger isn't even the whole story. A lot of people don't hesitate to say that truffles smell like love, or more plainly, like sex.
Adam Huggins 21:29
Okay, so let me get the straight. Truffles look like little poops and smell like sex. Whereas stink horns look like sex, and smell like poops?
Mendel Skulski 21:41
Yeah, these are pretty strange coincidences. And the chemistries of truffle odors have evolved to be both super volatile and water insoluble, which means that this aromatic siren song will always seep up into the air currents, even out from under layers of rain soaked Earth. After all, it really doesn't matter how good you smell, if no one can ever smell you. Over enough time, these evolutionary pressures turned mushrooms into experts on mammalian obsession.
Merlin Sheldrake 22:16
These lures arise in a co-evolutionary dance between different species taking place over millions of years. So I think this is a very interesting way to think about how different organisms make sense of each other. You know, if you think about this truffle smell, it's a kind of fungal portrait-in-scent of animal fascination,
Adam Huggins 22:37
A portrait-in-scent of animal fascination. Mendel, what is a portrait-in-scent of animal fascination? What does that mean?
Mendel Skulski 22:45
Well, I would say truffles and Matsutake are just a couple of examples, if some of the loudest. You could make a similar case for the taste of fruit or the smell of flowers. Neither our love for these flavors, or the flavors themselves are static qualities. They push and they pull, refining and mimicking each other through time.
Mendel Skulski 23:14
So speaking of portraits in scent, there's an artist I'd like you to meet. I actually asked her the same thing that you asked me.
Anicka Yi 23:23
Hold on, let me just savour this for a moment. I've never been asked if I have a favourite fungal odor. I don't know how honestly, I should respond to this!
Mendel Skulski 23:39
We'll get back to that in a second. But first, this is Anicka Yi.
Anicka Yi 23:44
Usually if I'm in a taxi cab, I don't tell people what I do because I don't necessarily want to invite 50 questions about conceptual art...
Mendel Skulski 23:53
But in less captive conversations...
Anicka Yi 23:56
Then I will say, sure, you know, I'm a conceptual artist who deals with evolutionary biology and olfaction.
Mendel Skulski 24:03
To say that Anicka's work is best experienced in person is an understatement. Her exhibits have involved masses of cultured agar, bacterial paints, air samples, yeasty doughs, and fragrances of all descriptions.
Anicka Yi 24:18
A lot of my interest is exploring and investigating how porous we all are, and that there aren't these tidy borders and boundaries around these species, and that there are no real crisp edges around evolution in that way. That even within the human body alone, we are outnumbered by trillions and trillions of micro-organisms that are a consortium of fungi, virus and microbes. So ultimately, the philosophical question is what is the self, when the self is comprised of a multitude of other organisms.
Mendel Skulski 24:57
Which is why, rather than choose a particular smelly mushroom, Anicka's favorite fungal odor has everything to do with that composite self.
Anicka Yi 25:07
I love bodily fungal odors. It's just so fascinating. Because you have deep, deep layers. I'm talking about, like, how many rings does a tree trunk have? That, to me, it's like time traveling to prehistory. These are ancient odors. And I don't mean to put some kind of like linearity, or temporality associated with odor, but I think that it's very hard for me to not associate that with a kind of early pre-historical smell. It just mean that it takes me beyond human timescales when I smell fungal odor.
Mendel Skulski 25:49
Of course, the world of fungi is bigger than just mushrooms, or even mycelium. Single celled fungi, known as yeasts, live in and on your body. They, along with trillions of bacteria are responsible for the gamut of smells known as body odor. These are smells that aren't often discussed in polite company, and part of Anicka's work is to challenge exactly why that is: investigating what she calls the biopolitics of the senses.
Anicka Yi 26:19
For the most part, I think that most people don't really value smell and they think of it as a nuisance. You know, when you walk into a kind of white cube Art Gallery, you're not supposed to smell Thai food, you're not supposed to smell yesterday's lingering ashtray. Power in our civilization today is not supposed to have an odor attached to it. We've almost kind of willfully diminished our ability to detect odors because of a cultural conditioning, where we have associated odor with the biological, with the organic, and therefore we have deemed it a vulnerability, a weakness and something that is meant to be brought on with shame and horror. A classic example is body odor.
Mendel Skulski 27:13
For many cultures around the world, and in the global north, especially, there's a strong social conditioning that perpetuates a sanitized, muted smell scape. And this repulsion to smell is particularly strong for the aromas of human bodies. But paradoxically, for those who work in fragrance, these funky musks are held in some of the highest regard. Take another kind of fungal odor, Agarwood or Oud, the rotting heartwood of Aquilaria trees.
Merlin Sheldrake 27:48
The tree defends itself by producing a kind of resin. And so this smell, I suppose, is more of an interplay between the fungal and the plant smell. But it only happens in response to fungal infection. And the Oud wood, these seams of wood are cut out of Aquilaria trees, and then either burned or turned to oil. And in both cases, the smell is just astonishing. It smells like the ass of the world. It's got this astonishing bodily quality and it's just captivating. I find it's almost too much. But it's one of the most valuable items in the world, valuable materials in the world – this, this wood, this Agarwood. And the treats have been hunted to near extinction in the wild.
Mendel Skulski 28:28
And that's because it's used as a base in some of the most coveted perfumes. Fragranciers compose with scents, and they use Oud for its exceptional ability to tie the other notes together into olfactory harmony.
Merlin Sheldrake 28:43
It's such a common theme in perfume making. Of course, you have Ambergris, vomit of the sperm whale, and you have a castoreum, the anal gland of the beaver. And these are very intense smells when you smell them by themselves, but they do something magical when you mix them in a delicate way.
Mendel Skulski 28:59
And this is actually a theme for some truly pungent chemicals. In large doses, people can't stand them, but in low concentrations, they're irresistible. other components of commercial perfumes include indole and skatole.
Adam Huggins 29:15
Skatole, like, like scat.
Mendel Skulski 29:19
Yep, poop. Both of these molecules are produced naturally in feces, and are responsible for much of the smell. But in moderation, people tend to think of them as floral. Like Jasmine. Skatole is even used in the flavor of strawberry ice cream.
Adam Huggins 29:38
What?
Mendel Skulski 29:39
And speaking of poop,
Adam Huggins 29:40
oh no...
Mendel Skulski 29:41
let's return to stinkhorns. It's important to remember that mushroom smells aren't always targeting humans, or even mammals. To us, the lure of a stinkhorn is less appealing than a truffle or a Matsutake, because stinkhorns rely on flies to spread their spores. Just like the Titan Arum, the Amorphophallus, uses flies for pollination. That's why they both generally smell like a cross between a dead animal and a latrine.
Adam Huggins 30:09
Sounds delightful, if you're a fly.
Mendel Skulski 30:13
And in their collaboration with flies, stinkhorns are diverse, successful in temperate and tropical climates all over the world, and completely indifferent to any human disgust. Although it might surprise you that some stinkhorns are actually considered a delicacy, after the stinky spore slime has been removed. But you won't see "stinkhorn" on the menu. Most people consider "bamboo pith fungus", or "veiled lady" to be at least a little bit more appetizing,
Adam Huggins 30:45
I'll have to add it to the list.
Mendel Skulski 30:48
I know a place.
Mendel Skulski 30:51
And with that, I think it's time to return to Matsutake, if you're prepared to accept that all of the excitement is indeed because of how these mushrooms smell.
Adam Huggins 31:02
I mean, what I've gotten from this conversation so far is that Matsutake fever is basically a byproduct of these fungi using the best tool that they have, which is their smell, to compel animals to do their bidding for them: to help spread their spores and reproduce. But I feel like we're missing an important piece here, which is that we are also capable of manipulating other organisms. And so I guess my question is, if we're so obsessed with these mushrooms, why don't we just grow them like we grow Shiitake mushrooms and oyster mushrooms and so many other foods that aren't at all mushrooms.
Mendel Skulski 31:39
So many people have tried. But so far, truffles and Matsutake have generally resisted being farmed in the traditional sense. And that's because they're both mycorrhizal.
Adam Huggins 31:51
Which means?
Mendel Skulski 31:52
Which means that like many fungi, they only live in connection with certain trees. They're symbiotic. The mycelium, the underground part of the fungus is literally woven in to the roots of surrounding trees, blurring the two organisms together at a cellular level. The fungus and the tree live together, trading nutrients for their mutual survival. The name Matsutake translates to pine mushroom, because they usually partner with various conifers. Here in BC with Douglas Firs especially, but down south in Karuk and Yurok territory, they're known as Tanoak mushrooms, because in that region, they prefer Tanoak and Madrone trees, also known as Arbutus.
Adam Huggins 32:40
And that's the only place I've ever been lucky enough to find my case when I lived there. So you can't exactly grow Matsutake in a factory or on a farm or on a factory farm. You really do need a forest.
Mendel Skulski 32:54
Right. Yeah, you need a forest of a certain age, with particular types of nutrient-poor soils, the right weather, and a whole constellation of other conditions to be just perfect. Without all those stars aligned, you might be able to grow a bit of Matsutake mycelium, but there's no guarantee that you'll ever get a mushroom.
Adam Huggins 33:16
So you can't farm them. And if you want to get some, you have to wait for the right season, get up early head for the hills, and basically just pull them out of the woods.
Mendel Skulski 33:26
Yeah, that or pay somebody to do it for you, you know, either directly or indirectly.
Adam Huggins 33:31
And from what I've heard, there are a ton of people doing this sort of thing – commercial mushroom pickers, which has got to have an impact, right?
Mendel Skulski 33:41
It has a huge impact, and in so many ways. It has impacts on the forest. It has impacts on the human community actually doing that work. And it even impacts how we collectively relate to this thing we call the wild.
Adam Huggins 33:57
How so?
Mendel Skulski 33:58
Well, I think the most direct way to talk about it is from the immediate economic impacts. Are you familiar with the term non-timber forest products?
Adam Huggins 34:08
Yep, there is even an acronym for it. NTFPs.
Mendel Skulski 34:12
Yeah. And it's not just mushrooms, it's berries and different things. As long as they're not wood, and you get them from the woods, it's an NTFP. So it's not unheard of for a community that has historically managed their forests for timber to realize that the mushrooms are actually more valuable than the raw logs.
Adam Huggins 34:34
As a sidebar, I once hitchhiked with a logger who had decided to just switch to full time mushroom picking because it was more lucrative for him. And he felt better about it. So definitely thing.
Mendel Skulski 34:49
Yeah, at an individual level like that, and at a forest management level too. Like in these rural villages in Yunnan, Matsutake have created new fortune, completely shifting regional economies. And with that forest management approaches. Michael and his colleagues in the Matsutake Worlds Research Group study how these effects have varied between the different mushroom producing regions around the world. In North America, as we've discussed on the show previously, many people think of forested lands as wildernesses – places that we shouldn't even consider cultivating or changing.
Michael Hathaway 35:26
There's sometimes this tendency to see all human action as inherently contaminating and damaging and degrading whereas in Japan, the assumption is that Matsutake start to decline in the places that have abandoned forests. So they say, you know, you need to take an attitude of care, you need to be maintaining the forest, you need to be raking the duff. You modify it in a way that makes it more conducive to the potentiality of Matsutake to emerge. And that whole way of thinking is just, I think, really pretty foreign to a lot of the North American trained ecologists.
Mendel Skulski 36:04
And in Japan, it's generally believed that it was the postwar urbanization that led to the decline of domestic Matsutake. The forests were no longer being inhabited, used or cared for by humans. The use of firewood was in decline, the pine duff piled high and became a rich compost. And eventually, the succession of broadleaf trees shaded out the red pines and the Matsutake disappeared along with them.
Adam Huggins 36:33
Right, so the Matsutake was kind of a feature of the early succession of this forest ecosystem.
Mendel Skulski 36:40
Exactly.
Adam Huggins 36:42
And now that it's gone, I assume that these forests are being managed to encourage more Matsutake?
Mendel Skulski 36:49
Yeah. In a word, yes. But there's no consensus on techniques. Despite a huge amount of research, the exact needs of Matsutake are still mysterious. And so regional management approaches are heavily colored by cultural preconceptions, and aesthetics. For example, some forest managers see raking duff as destructive and counterproductive. others see it as indispensable.
Adam Huggins 37:24
This is so common in kind of horticultural practice that you'll have people who will swear by one way of doing things and then other people who will swear by the entirely opposite way of doing things. And they'll both be teaching their way. And you'll interact with both of them. And you'll be like, well, they both get good results, or you can't tell the difference. But, you know, you'll have these different justifications in different ways you won't be able to make heads or tails of which is actually right. Anyway, it's... Yeah, it's not uncommon.
Mendel Skulski 37:53
No, no. And I think a lot of it comes down to the kinds of forests that people want to see around them. Like, it's not only about maximizing the production of this thing, or that thing. It's very much aesthetic,
Adam Huggins 38:06
Right. It might not necessarily be helping, but it does make us feel good to feel like we're doing something right.
Mendel Skulski 38:14
Mhm yeah. And I think that this issue is even further complicated, because in Matsutake's case, most of what it's doing is out of view. Its behavior as an organism is actually inscrutable to us because it lives underground, and it spreads to new territories and fruits, seemingly on its own whim.
Michael Hathaway 38:34
One of the things I love about Matsutake is that, you know, refuses to be domesticated after so much effort. And so it shows us so strongly, all of the kind of what I'm calling the world-making capacities of other organisms that far surpasses our intentions from for control or even management, and that we have to accommodate in different ways. And we accommodate it as we tried to attune ourselves to the kinds of interactions that Matsutake itself is making with other trees, with other organisms, with animals with different insects, and especially in the way it's communicating. And part of those… those worlds.
Mendel Skulski 39:15
So to acknowledge that fungi may have their own world-making capacities, is to realize that they're not just these inert things numb to their environment, either sitting still or, or moving automatically
Michael Hathaway 39:30
Sometimes when I read about different fungi, there's this description of them as for example, moving randomly, or they've seemed to not really be so sensate and like actively engaging with the sensuous world. And they seem like they're just acting out like the unstinting the unwinding of a spring within a clock.
Mendel Skulski 39:54
Instead, we could consider the possibility that fungi like animals, plants, and other microbes are sensitive to the world around them, and act deliberately in response.
Michael Hathaway 40:07
That's what it means to be alive – to make good decisions consistently, or at least not deadly decisions ever. That allows anything to see life as a series for all beings as a kind of constant acts of interpreting the world and making accomplishments and whatever it is, and finding food and staying away from predators and communicating with their own species and others.
Mendel Skulski 40:37
With that in mind, I want to re-examine this idea of olfaction. Since most people listening have probably experienced odor at some point in their lives, I didn't think it was necessary to stop and define it. But maybe now is the right time.
Merlin Sheldrake 40:53
Odor, I understand as one of our chemical senses. And so it's a way that we perceive chemicals in the air, as opposed to dissolve chemicals, which I would then think of more as taste even though taste has an olfactory component. So, it's a chemical sense, it's a way that we can detect chemicals in our environment,
Mendel Skulski 41:18
Which can be pretty useful.
Merlin Sheldrake 41:20
Yes, well, I think it's a very ancient sense. I mean, if you think about bacteria, they have a chemical senses. Fungi have chemical senses. Yeast, single celled fungi have chemical senses. It's a very, very basic feature of the living world, or the ability to monitor the chemical composition of your environment, and to change your behavior, according to various changes in the conditions around you. So it feels to me like what we call smell is our version of this very, very fundamental and ancient perceptual ability.
Merlin Sheldrake 41:53
But of course, it's not just restricted to those chemicals that we ourselves can smell. Fung use chemicals to organize their lives in many ways. And they can detect these chemicals and they produce these chemicals, whether or not we can smell them.
Mendel Skulski 42:09
It may be obvious by now, but fungi are some of life's most capable chemists. In some sense, their whole existence is chemical, creating digestive enzymes to break down the wood and minerals around them. Producing antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal compounds to protect them from would-be attackers, and even generating pheromones of communication: a molecular call and response between a fungus and a root; between two fungi looking for mates; and even within one mycelium, allowing different strands to smell how nearby they are to their sibling branches. A kind of fungal, proprioception. Fungi are sensitive to a wealth of chemical messages that, by their composition and concentration, tell of author, distance, and direction.
Mendel Skulski 43:07
To sum it up on mycelium relies on its ability to sniff out food, avoid danger, and to make the right connections with plants, animals, and other fungi.
Adam Huggins 43:19
And somehow, it does all of this without possessing a nose. Right, like fungi don't actually smell the same way that we do. It's not like they have noses or brains.
Mendel Skulski 43:31
No, they don't have noses or brains. As mammals. Our sense of smell is mediated by our olfactory epithelium. So that's about nine square centimeters of specialized tissue kind of up and behind the nose. Molecules in the air float up our nostrils, where they bind to receptor cells and trigger a signaling cascade, amplifying the chemical signal so that eventually we are alerted to their presence. And in general, our dominant sensory organs, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth – we think of them as centralized. A fungus on the other hand, doesn't have such specialized structures, and its body is diffused throughout its environment. The whole mycelium could even be thought of as one massive olfactory epithelium, able to smell different things in parallel across different parts of its body.
Merlin Sheldrake 44:31
Receptors to different chemicals are not equally distributed across the mycelium, but nonetheless, with a whole surface of fungal mycelium is in principle, chemically excitable, responsive. If my skin was all olfactory epithelium, and if I buried myself in the soil, then I would have this similar kind of full emotion in olfactory sensitivity than I might do if I was a fungus. But either way, it's exciting for us to smell these more obvious smells like mushroom smells, and truffle smells, because these are the parts of fungal life which are made perceptible to us, you know I think as sort of clumsy, lumbering animals. But, these are the parts of fungal chemical lives which are revealed to us for various evolutionary reasons, and they point to this very rich chemical world, which is out of olfactory reach, but which is such an important part of the way that fungi engage with others and with the living world in general.
Adam Huggins 45:31
Well, thank you, Mendel, that was a wild ride. And it's nice to know that not only are mushrooms themselves sometimes quite smelly, but they are also doing all sorts of smelling on their own.
Mendel Skulski 45:45
Hey, my pleasure. And yeah, I think it's nice to remember that when you're close enough to smell a mushroom, it might just be smelling you back.
Adam Huggins 45:55
That is indeed, a unusual notion that I will carry in the back of my head when I'm walking to the forest next. But before we go, I want to dig just a little bit deeper on this question of non-human agency, because it feels to me that there is a pretty significant paradigm shift buried in there. I can smell it.
Mendel Skulski 46:19
Okay, okay, what you got?
Adam Huggins 46:21
Okay, so I would say that a traditional view of evolution would describe the trajectory of an organism, or a whole lineage of organisms, as the sum of a set of selective pressures over time. And those could be challenges in their environment, their ability to find food and mates, and to survive or to avoid being eaten.
Mendel Skulski 46:44
Sure, yeah.
Adam Huggins 46:46
But your Matsutake example implies that this just isn't the whole story, we might not be able to examine their decision making processes, if you want to call it that, but we can definitely see the results. The mushrooms have evolved this lure, they're older. And humans have responded by physically changing the landscape in their favor, or at least trying to figure out how to do so. And not only does the environment exert pressure on the organism, in this case the Matsutake, the organism is also exerting a kind of pressure on the environment, if indirectly through us.
Mendel Skulski 47:25
Yeah. And it's not just about Matsutake, or even fungi more generally. They're just, in my opinion, a really captivating example. Nor is it even limited to those influences mediated by human intervention. I think you can look at practically all behavior, by practically any living being, as having some kind of reciprocal relationship with its surroundings,
Michael Hathaway 47:54
Through their behaviors, through what they eat and don't eat, and how they dig holes, and how they breathe, and put chemical languages into the atmosphere, etc., and form these relationships with sometimes new plants and animals that they themselves are engaging with an existing and dynamic landscape. They're not just the passive pawns of an active environment that's the force for evolution. In ecology, that's now called niche construction theory.
Merlin Sheldrake 48:26
I think these relationships do scale up, they spill out over meters, and then from meters to acres and acres to hectares and hectares to square kilometers. Because certain plants can grow in certain places, because of the relationships they maintain with the soil microbes. And the the soil microbes in turn, are shaped by the plants in these feedback cycles. And absolutely, you can think about these relationships as patterning ecosystems on a landscape scale. And these relationships themselves, often come down to these chemical exchanges.
Anicka Yi 48:59
Now we're starting to learn even with the human anatomy, that the brain is not necessarily doing all the steering and driving. But you can find scent glands, not just in your nose, but also in your gut, in your stomach. And I think that our brain is not necessarily the first sort of area that receives information. And that's what's so fascinating about the odor is that it travels through the limbic system, that it is a pre-cognitive experience. I would argue that other living entities, biological entities, still are very much in tune to this kind of intimate, intense relationship to the odorific world around them. It's hard to not think about all of the different consequences surrounding our denial and repression of our bodies of our relationship in the broader ecosystem. You could make a larger case around, you know, anthropogenic climate crisis and how we ended up there because we've been repressing and denying a more fluid coexistence with our natural world.
Anicka Yi 50:14
All of our sort of human based standards for intelligence kind of go out the window. When we talk about these micro-organisms, or when we think about machine intelligence. And when I say you know, more than human, that's what I'm talking about as well, like machine intelligence as well as plant or microbial intelligence. I tend to think of the human as some glorified condominium for both micro-organisms – they're running the show. At best we're co-collaborators with these other entities. At best. At best we're guests on their planet.
Adam Huggins 50:55
Thanks for listening. This episode of future ecologies was produced by your hosts, Mendel Skulski, and myself, Adam Huggins,
Mendel Skulski 51:03
Michael Hathaway is the author of "World Makers: How Rethinking Fungi Helps Us Understand the Liveliness of All Beings", which will be published by Princeton University Press in 2022. It's the second in a fungal trilogy, after Anna Tsing's incredible book, "The Mushroom at the End of the World".
Adam Huggins 51:24
Merlin Sheldrake is the author of "Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures".
Mendel Skulski 51:33
Anicka Yi is the author of an upcoming 3-volume series on the use of Fungi, Algae, and Bacteria in the arts, arriving in 2023. In the meantime, you can smell more of her work at BiographyFragrance.com
Adam Huggins 51:49
Visit us at futureecologies.net for links, citations, and lots more.
Mendel Skulski 51:54
While you’re there, you can explore the spectrum of fungal fragrances with the Mushroom Smelling Wheel by Willoughby Arevalo and Isabelle Kirouac, and check out the amazing cover art for this episode, illustrated by Leya Tess, at futureecologies.net
Adam Huggins 52:12
Special thanks to Willoughby Arevalo, Lucia Pietroiusti, Robin Kort, Yasaman Sheri, Paul Kroeger, Andrew Philips, and the Vancouver Mycological Society.
Mendel Skulski 52:25
Music by Cagpie, My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt, H Takahashi, Hotspring, You’re Me, Soda Lite, DJ Obake, Hidden Sky, C. Diab, and Sunfish Moon Light
Adam Huggins 52:41
Future Ecologies is an independent podcast, made possible with the support of our amazing patrons. Join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies
Mendel Skulski 52:54
Okay. Smell ya later.