Part C: Reading Comprehension Spring seems to be the season of the mushroom. Fashion shows in previous years have highlighted the mycelium of the fungi—the under-ground root-like network from which mushrooms spring up—and the “leather” that can be made from those threads. This season, designers are slapping images of mushrooms themselves on everything from handbags to jumpsuits. You can even buy toadstool-inspired accessories, like a $6,950 green mushroom pendant. Fungi are being used to produce various different types of material. People can make textiles out of fungal mycelium— leather-like textiles. Different companies produce it in different ways. People can grow fungal leather on agricultural waste, cornstalks or wood chips that will otherwise be discarded. People can grow these materials in a short period of time, a couple of weeks without killing animals. People do not need to clear forests for pasture for the animals that they are going to kill. There’s a whole lot of polluting industrial work that you can bypass, so they show enormous promise. As the environmental emergency has worsened, there’s been a growing awareness of the interconnectivity of the living world. Fungi are really powerful poster organisms for ecological thinking. Ecology studies the relationships between organisms, and fungi form physical connections between organisms, so embody this fundamental principle of ecology.