We don’t know how many of them there are; we just know there are a lot.
A lot, as in millions. Multiple millions.
We know some are good, but we also know some are bad.
Bad as in fatal. Bad as in causing maybe 3.7 million deaths a year, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.
Since we don’t know how many of them there are, we don’t know how many are in each category — friendly, hostile or simply harmless and disinterested.
We also don’t know where they all are.
If not being able to locate and identify something that has absolutely no feelings about whether it kills us or not sounds like something that requires official investigation, then we’ll put you down as a supporter of a proposal by Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington County, to establish a state mycologist.
For those of you who skipped that day in biology class, that’s a fungi expert. Or maybe they simply didn’t teach about fungi back in the day. That’s the problem with mycology — fungi simply aren’t very well understood.
“Basically we know very little about fungi,” says Andrew Miller, mycologist and director of the Herbarium/Fungarium at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “We’re almost 200 years behind the plant people. For every plant species, there are 30 botanists to study it. For every mycologist, there are 300 species out there.”
Or maybe more.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature says there might be 2.5 million species of fungi in the world. The website Nature guesses 5 million.
Nobody really knows — only about 155,000 have been officially “described.” Depending on which set of figures you want to use, we may have explored more of the moon than we have the fungi here on our own planet.
Fungi, much like Rodney Dangerfield, have historically gotten little respect. Animals can be cute, plants can be pretty, but fungi are neither. They are important, though. “If we didn’t have fungi we wouldn’t have plants,” Miller says. “They’re important for everything.”
Everything? Really?
“If there’s a tree out in the front yard, there’s a mycorrhizae [a type of fungi] giving the tree water and nutrients and the tree is giving fungi sugar,” Miller says. “Every time a tree falls, something has to decompose and that’s fungi. Termites wouldn’t be able to eat wood without fungi in their gut.” Cows? Yep. Fungi help them digest grass and turn it into milk.
“Penicillin is kind of an important drug — it’s due to fungi,” Miller says. “The citric acid in soda comes from a fungus. Any alcohol product comes from yeast and that’s a fungus.”
Some fungi are also natural-born killers. A fungus known popularly as “white nose syndrome” is killing off bats by the millions (six million is the most recent estimate from the U.S. Forest Service). About 200 types of fungi are infectious to humans (that we know of), but the World Health Organization has identified four of them as “priority pathogens,” the fungal equivalent of being on a terrorist watch list. And then there’s the all-too-popular but appropriately named death cap mushroom that kills about 100 people around the world each year. (You only need to eat half of a death cap mushroom to get a fatal dose.) Of course, other mushrooms can be bad for you, too. Miller says he gets a lot of calls every year from Poison Control from people who have eaten the wrong kind of ‘shroom. The National Poison Data System averages about 7,428 mushroom-related calls each year, although only about 2.9 of those each year result in death.
All that is fascinating and cool and kind of scary, but that’s not why Lopez — who chairs the House Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources Committee — has introduced a budget amendment to create a state mycologist.
“Fungi are some of the most important — and most overlooked — organisms in Virginia,” Lopez said in a statement. “They keep forests healthy, support wildlife, protect water quality, sequester carbon and even contribute to local food and tourism. However, climate change, habitat loss, and invasive species are threatening fungi across the Commonwealth. Without healthy fungal networks, we may see consequences ranging from forest decline and erosion to disappearing edible mushrooms that are a part of local economies. Through this budget amendment, and an accompanying bill being carried by Delegate [Charles] Schmidt, Virginia will have a state expert to help manage fungi, monitor threats, and guide conservation efforts in this field.”
Schmidt is a freshman Democrat from Richmond. His bill — HB 1475 — would establish the Virginia Fungi Task Force “to assess, categorize, and protect the Commonwealth’s natural fungi species and explore the economic potential of fungi.” His office said the bill came about from “close consultation with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Virginia League of Conservation Voters to ensure that Virginia’s fungal stewardship is directly linked to the broader goals of watershed protection and climate resilience.”
Fungi are clearly having a moment.
It’s not just in Richmond. Three years ago, the British newspaper The Guardian published a story about what it called “the fungal awakening” as both science and popular culture realize how important fungi are. (This is your cue to go watch “The Last of Us” starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Spoiler alert: The villain is a fungus.)
Fungi serve much the same role that canaries did in coal mines: If they start dying, that’s a warning sign. “We are seeing increasing forest stress linked to soil and fungal decline,” Lopez said in his statement. “Climate change is altering fungal species ranges and fruiting patterns. Trees build specialized relationships with fungi and if those species go away it has major consequences for Virginia forests and their carbon sequestration potential. We have no statewide data on fungal diversity, abundance, or emerging threats. This is a modest first step to begin better understanding a critical part of Virginia’s ecosystems.”
If some tree species go away, that has major economic consequences, too. The chestnut blight that wiped out the mighty chestnut from Appalachian forests was — and still is — a fungus. The Dutch elm disease that has killed off many elm trees is also a fungus. Our forebears who depended on the chestnut tree for sustenance — the nuts were a cash crop — would think we are living in a post-apocalyptic world due to a fungus.
On the other hand, some of us think the right kind of fungi — mushrooms, just not the death cap variety — are pretty tasty. (Others think they’re “ick,” but they’re wrong.) Great View Research says Americans bought $2.93 billion worth of mushrooms in 2023, and that market is growing at an annual rate of 9.4%.
Pennsylvania dominates the nation’s mushroom market, producing about 66% of the nation’s mushrooms, according to no less an authority than the American Mushroom Institute. Before you snicker at the name, consider this: Penn State says mushrooms account for 9,500 jobs and $2.7 billion of economic activity in Pennsylvania each year. That’s real money, even if you are one of those who pick the mushrooms off a pizza.
Virginia doesn’t rank anywhere close, but our mushroom farming has doubled since 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We now grow about $1.8 million worth of mushrooms, which is money in somebody’s pocket. Much of the data about mushroom farming is, like mushrooms themselves, kept in the dark for privacy reasons. However, based on the square footage devoted to mushroom farming, the top three counties appear to be Essex County, Washington County and Appomattox County, in that order.
Now you know why the General Assembly is taking up measures about fungi. But I bet you didn’t know these four fun facts about fungi:
More than 110 species of fungi glow in the dark.
The largest organism in the world is a fungus — the so-called “Humongous Fungus” in Malheur National Forest in Oregon, covers about 2,385 acres, is estimated to weigh 35,000 tons and could be about 8,650 years old.
Scientists have found 37 species of fungi living in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor; at least one of them seems to thrive on the radiation. And they’re not even the ones that glow in the dark.
One species of fungi — Schizophyllum commune, the split gill fungus — has 28,000 sexes. Don’t ask; I’m not sure I want to know. All right, fine, here’s a picture:
Four questions about fungi
We asked Lina Rodriguez Salamanca from the Plant Disease Clinic at Virginia Tech about fungi. Here’s what she said.
1. Why are fungi important to the environment?
Fungi are the primary recyclers in nature. They have an incredible ability to break down complex materials, return them to the soil, make them available to plants and trees and fix carbon. Fungi also help with soil health, making soils more resilient to erosion and drought. Beneficial fungi, such as mycorrhizal fungi associated with plants and trees, facilitate water and nutrient uptake, improving plant productivity and, in turn, forest community composition and stability.
2. In Virginia, are there particular types of fungi we should be watching for climate indicators?
In my discipline, climate change can impact some of those fungi that are plant pathogens, on how long or how severe epidemics may be, potentially causing crop losses in important crops in Virginia when extended periods of weather are beneficial for disease development. Also, plant pathogens that rely on insect vectors to spread, such as oak wilt and laurel wilt. Both fungi are spread by small beetles and can have a significant impact on our forests and urban landscapes. In 2022, laurel wilt was confirmed in Virginia and has continued to move northward; in fall 2025, it was confirmed in New York State. Oak wilt is a very important disease of oaks devastating in the Midwest; it is present in our surrounding states, however, not confirmed in Virginia. We urge citizens to be on the lookout for both plant diseases and, if suspected, get in touch with your local extension agent or directly with us at the plant disease clinic so we can help with testing. Early detection can help stop the spread.
3. How much do we know about fungi in Virginia? Is that a well-studied field or no?
There are a variety of Virginia Tech plant pathologists specializing in fungal plant diseases, not only at the Blacksburg campus, but also on the research stations throughout Virginia (ARECS), helping to understand a variety of fungal pathogens and different crops, from field crops to specialty crops, and how to manage them to prevent crop losses effectively.
Fungi are the most frequent diagnosis we have in the plant disease clinic, in terms of plant problems caused by plant pathogens, followed by bacteria, virus and then nematodes. We at the clinic continue to help diagnose common fungal diseases, but are always on the lookout for new and emerging fungal plant diseases.
4. What else should we know about fungi in Virginia?
There’s an incredible variety of mushrooms in our forests and landscapes; they’re fascinating organisms with puzzling appearances and various ecological roles. They are food for wildlife and humans. Fungi have historically been used to produce medicine (for example, antibiotics), food (for example, bread, cheese and wine), bioenergy and bioremediation. Fungal organisms are versatile and help make their ecosystems more resilient. Fungi can also cause human and animal diseases, especially in the tropics, and I wonder if some of those pathogens may become more problematic in the future for us in temperate climates.
That’s your science lesson for the day. If you’re hungry for politics, and not mushrooms, sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out every Friday afternoon. Or, as I may now call it, Fungus Friday.
