Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, Penguin

A journey deep into the underground world of fungi – which the author has been fascinated by since he was a teenager. “A solid log becomes soil, a lump of dough rises, a mushroom erupts overnight – but how?” Cambridge University’s Department of Plant Sciences answered his questions and he went to study in the tropical forests of Panama. Like a boys’ own adventure he marvelled at his Smithsonian Tropical Research station. The island was part of a nature reserve covered by forest, apart from dormitories, canteen and labs. “There were greenhouses for growing plants, drying cupboards filled with bags of leaf litter, a room lined with microscopes and a walk-in freezer with bottles of tree sap.” Fungi’s ability to digest plastic, pesticides and explosives is being harnessed in breakthrough technologies, and the discovery they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood

Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. “The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them,” says Sheldrake, who walks with the truffle-hunting Lagotto Romagnolo dogs as they track fungi that have never been domesticated.