Funga Obscura

‘I scanned the forest floor around me. I couldn’t yet see fungi, but I could smell them. Lowering my nose to the ground, I inhaled a distinctive fungal funk. I rolled over some bark and there they were! Gossamer threads of mycelia wended their way through the layers, weaving them together. Soon these furtive fungi would fashion their mycelia into mushrooms and heave their way through the earth.’

This book is about fungi, and the photography of fungi. The title – Funga Obscura – unites the two. Beginning in elemental landscapes of ice and rock, the book traces the evolutionary path of fungi as enablers of life on land, and creators of soils and forests. Crossing continents and ecosystems, we navigate lichen-covered landscapes, crawl in the fungal undergrowth, scale glacial extremes and duck between rainforest shadows.

Alison Pouliot, ecologist and environmental photographer, captures these remarkable lifeforms in this visual love letter to fungi.

Praise for Alison Pouliot’s Underground Lovers:

‘Pouliot conveys the otherworldly charisma of mushrooms with love and skill.’ – The Sydney Morning Herald

‘[Alison Pouliot makes a] convincing case...Fungi are essential to the world as we know it.’ – New York Review of Books