“The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, because it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however remote. It is the expression of an idea; growth according to a law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, appropriated by spirit…the humblest fungus betrays a life akin to our own. It is a successful poem in its kind.”
Henry David Thoreau