El Micelio — The Simbiosis Blog

Historia y Etnomicología
Agarikon: the world's longest-living mushroom and its antimicrobial memory
Agarikon (Fomitopsis officinalis), called the mushroom of life by the Greeks, can live for more than seventy years and is studied today for its antimicrobial chemistry. Read more...
Ciencia de los Hongos
Oyster mushroom: the gourmet mushroom that also cleans up the world
The oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) grows on agricultural waste and turns it into protein: food, science, and circular economy in a single fungus. Read more...
Ciencia de los Hongos
Enoki: the pale, thread-like mushroom that grows toward the light
Enoki (Flammulina velutipes) is a winter mushroom whose cultivated form grows in pale strands toward the light; its polysaccharides are studied for their effect on the microbiota and immunity. Read more...
Ciencia de los Hongos
Poria (Fu Ling): the subterranean mushroom revered in Chinese medicine
Poria (Poria cocos), known as Fu Ling, grows underground beside pine roots and is among the most prescribed herbs in traditional Chinese medicine. Read more...
Ciencia de los Hongos
Tremella: the snow fungus that retains water like skin
Snow fungus (Tremella fuciformis) is a gelatinous delicacy of East Asia whose polysaccharides retain water with an efficiency that dermatology is studying today. Read more...
Ciencia de los Hongos
Chaga: the birch charcoal that concentrates centuries of boreal forest
Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) grows for decades on the birches of the boreal forest, concentrating melanins and polysaccharides that science studies for their antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties. Read more...
Francisca Quiroz Olvera: the forest as a classroom, fungi as heritage
Francisca Quiroz Olvera is a mushroom gatherer from Omitlán de Juárez, Hidalgo — one of the most recognized guardians of traditional mycological knowledge in the Sierra Hidalguense. She has been collecting mushrooms since she can remember, was an exhibitor at the First International Mushroom Festival in 2025, and collaborates with Simbiosis on pieces that document that universe from within. Read more...
César Kevin Pérez Pacheco: When Mycology Becomes an Image
Mycologist, photographer, and science communicator, César Kevin Pérez Pacheco works at the intersection of science and art: his photographs of wild Mexican fungi are at once rigorous taxonomic documents and visual pieces that capture some of the awe that the fungal kingdom deserves. This is his story and his work. Read more...
FungiFacts
FungiFacts #2 — Fungi and the Human Body: 10 Connections You Probably Didn't Know About
Your body hosts dozens of fungal genera. The antibiotics you take come from fungi. The chitin in a mushroom's cell wall is chemically identical to the shell of a crab. And the way your cells make energy has an exact parallel in fungal biochemistry. The second installment of FungiFacts explores the most intimate connection of all: the one between fungi and your body. Read more...
Historia y Etnomicología
Fungal Syncretisms: When Fungi Crossed Borders Between Worlds
The red mushroom with white spots in fairy tales. The teonanácatl of the Mexica. The soma of the Vedas. The dead fly in Russian wine. The Reishi of the Buddhist monk. Across cultures and millennia, the mushroom has been a vehicle for the sacred — a symbol that crosses borders between worlds. Read more...
Historia y Etnomicología
Yeasts, ferments, and penicillin: the fungi that built modern civilization
The oldest beer in the world is 13,000 years old and was made by a fungus. The medicine that saved the most lives in history was discovered by a fungus that contaminated a petri dish. And organ transplants exist thanks to a fungus from Norwegian soil. This is the story of how the fungi kingdom built modern civilization. Read more...
Historia y Etnomicología
Ethnomycology: when fungi were medicine, food, and a portal
Ethnomycology — the study of human use of fungi — reveals that mushrooms have been food, medicine, religious symbols, and tools for consciousness transformation in almost every civilization in the world. The story we were told about mushrooms is incomplete. Read more...