Fungi thrive in megafire dead zones

Hi there 🍄 

This week’s highlights include a new executive order in Minneapolis on psychedelics and an interview with Melissa Etheridge.

Fungi thrive in burned soil in megafire dead zones

Thank pyrophilous microbes for their resilience. Scientists from the University of California Riverside discovered bacterial and fungi microbes that bounce back with remarkable speed. Researchers studying the 2018 Holy Fire in California that burned 23,136 acres found that the burn scar soil lost biomass and richness, but underwent rapid changes in the year after the fire. “Certain species increased in abundance, and in fact, there were really rapid changes in abundance over time in the burned soils [while ] there were no changes at all in the unburned soils,” said Sydney Glassman, UCR mycologist and header research. As wildfires become more frequent due to climate change, scientists wonder if these microbes can adapt quickly enough to ensure ecosystem recovery.

Read more about the findings. 

Minneapolis mayor eases enforcement of psychedelic use

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey directed the city’s police to deprioritize psychedelic substance use enforcement with the Deprioritizing Enforcement of Entheogenic Plants order. While this move doesn't legalize such substances, it decriminalizes their personal use and limits the use of city resources for related investigations. Minnesota recently became the 23rd state to legalize the recreational use of cannabis and with this, Minneapolis steps closer to places like Denver in its approach to psychedelics.

Read more about the executive order.

Around the web

• Melissa Etheridge spoke to DoubleBlind about her journey with psychedelics through grief and transformation: ”Well, the very nature of plant medicine is completely outside the regular sort of run of the mill idea we have of medicine. Because modern society grew up with ‘you live and sometimes there’s something wrong with you’ or ‘something gets broken and the doctor will fix it.’

• U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently shared that she ate “magic mushrooms” in Beijing: “There was a delicious mushroom dish. I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. I learned that later.”

• These ceramic mushroom plates come in subtle colors with species that are very tempting to collect and display.

Featured artist: Madge Evers

Madge Evers is a visual artist, gardener, and educator whose work celebrates decomposition and regeneration. Her mushroom spore print art spans mediums: paint, cyanotype processes, biomorphic abstractions on paper, and the spore print itself. Her work brings the natural world with fingerprint detail that feels familiar and expansive at once. Her Instagram captures the process of capturing the spore prints, from the trees she inoculates to the fruiting bodies they produce.

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