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Last broadcast on Thu, 7 Oct 2010, 21:00 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
23/40. We go in search of fungi this week with expert Lynne Boddy. We have previously reported the importance of microbes in Saving Species. "It's the little things that run the world" Aaron Bernstein from Harvard University told us. Fungi belong to that group of little things - but some fungi are not so little. One type forms the largest terrestrial living organism on earth with its matrix of underground roots [hyphae] spreading across an area the size of a football pitch. We're in a west Wales woodland looking for the wonderful fruiting bodies, at the time of year when the otherwise hidden fungi emerges from the ground with their beautiful, odd, weird and strangely shaped and coloured mushrooms. And they have as many intriguing common names as they are varied in appearance.
We discover the crucial role fungi have in keeping woodlands alive.
We're also back in Africa with a report from Tessa McGregor about the successful conservation of the Grevy's Zebra in the Samburu National Park in Kenya.
Presented by Brett Westwood
Produced by Sheena Duncan
Series Editor Julian Hector.
Professor Lynne Boddy inspects a fungus on dead wood
Image by Chris Sperring
The ‘wood-wide web’ of mycelium
Lynne discovering individual hyphae strands spreading through the leaf litter on the woodland floor to form a mat of filaments known as mycelium.
Image by Chris Sperring
Grevy’s Zebra, Samburu National Park, Kenya
Image by Crispin Zeeman / Earthwatch
Grevy's Zebra, Samburu National Park, Kenya
Image by Hussein Gomar / Earthwatch
Dr. Nick Oguge, Earthwatch Kenya Country Director
Image by Earthwatch
Broadcasts
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Tue 5 Oct 201011:00
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Thu 7 Oct 201021:00
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