Everything here is free for everyone. No account needed — just fun, honest stories about fungi, forests and growing your own food.
Meet the mushrooms you can actually grow at home — oyster, shiitake, lion's mane, wine cap and more. Every species in these spotlights is named, cultivated and known-safe, so there is no guessing and no dangerous look-alike — for curious kids and their grown-ups.
Fungi are the planet’s quiet caretakers. Here is the big picture of how they recycle dead forests, feed nearly every plant, wire whole woodlands together underground, and can even be grown into materials — for curious explorers and their grown-ups.
Long before science gave them names, fungi were quietly changing the world — starting fires, raising bread, healing wounds, colouring cloth, and filling our stories with magic. Here is the big picture of fungi in culture and history, for curious kids and their grown-ups.
Mushrooms are one of the tastiest ways to bring kids into the kitchen — deeply savoury, full of good things, and safe when they come from a grow kit or a shop. Here is the big picture of cooking and eating mushrooms, for families who want to grow, cook, and share them together.
Growing mushrooms at home is easier — and safer — than it sounds. A grow kit does the hard part for you, so a family can watch a plain white block sprout real mushrooms on the windowsill in a week or two. Here is the big picture: how kits work, what mushrooms feed on, and how to fix the wobbles along the way.
From Japanese oak logs to the old caves of Paris and a forest-sized fungus in Oregon, mushrooms are a truly global food. Here is the big-picture tour of the world's mushroom cuisines, growing traditions, and fungal geography — for curious kids and their grown-ups.
Some wild mushrooms are deadly, and you cannot tell them apart by looking — so the rule for every family is the same: never eat wild. Here is the one habit that keeps kids safe around mushrooms, plus the safe, fun way to enjoy them: known species from a shop or a grow kit, always cooked, always with a grown-up.
Fungi are not plants, not animals, but a kingdom all their own. Here is the big picture of how mushrooms really work — the hidden threads, the dust-fine spores, and why fungi hold the living world together — for curious kids and their grown-ups.
A mushroom is a tiny science lab you can grow on a windowsill. Here is the big picture of the hands-on stuff — spore prints, fair-test experiments, mushroom maths, and classroom projects — for curious kids, families, and teachers.
You do not need a science degree to teach children about fungi — you need a kit, a nature walk, and one firm safety rule. Here is the grown-up's overview: how to teach it, how it fits school science, how to keep it safe, and how to choose a grow kit that actually works.
Yes! Cultivated mushrooms from shops are grown under controlled, inspected conditions—very different from wild ones. The safety rules are simple: keep them cool, cook them, and never swap in a foraged look-alike.
On your plate, mushrooms count as a vegetable, but in biology they are fungi—neither plant nor animal. Here's why the supermarket produce section and the science lab put them in completely different boxes.
The idea that trees talk and share food through underground fungi sounds magical—and it might seem that way when you hear stories about a 'Wood Wide Web.' But scientists reviewing 26 field studies in 2023 found that popular claims ran ahead of the evidence. Here's what's really true.
Bury identical leaves in two jars, add a pinch of soil-fungi to one, and weigh weekly to chart which breaks down faster over four weeks. Decomposition made into data—and proof that fungi are nature's recyclers.
Both fungi and bacteria break down dead things and turn them into nutrients. But fungal cells have something bacteria don't—a nucleus. And only fungi build threads big enough for your eyes to see.
A ready-to-fruit mushroom kit is the easiest way to grow your own at home. These seven simple tips help your first kit produce a healthy, tasty crop.
In 1928, a lab accident changed everything. A mould drifted onto a petri dish and killed the bacteria growing there — the first time a fungus had been discovered to stop dangerous infections. This is how penicillin was born.