Ecologist, environmental photographer and author Alison Pouliot lives and breathes fungi.
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She has been running fungus workshops for 25 years and since the release of her latest book, Underground Lovers, on March 1, she has been inundated with requests for interviews and to run workshops.
She runs eight-hour workshops by day and seminars by night, with 54 scheduled between May 1 and July 10.
If that isn't enough, for the last 22 years Ms Pouliot has doubled her fungus fun by travelling around the Northern hemisphere for its autumn mushroom season.
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Beautiful, bizarre, inexplicable and ephemeral
As a child she was fascinated by nature and noticed things like a spider on a leaf or an orchid coming up.
Fungi held a particular allure.
With their kooky and bizarre manifestations, they were unusual, and hard to make sense of, seemingly inexplicable.
"They are so ephemeral. They are there and then they're gone," Ms Pouliot said.
Fundamental yet overlooked
That fascination with the aesthetics of fungi, led her to the science.
Ms Pouliot trained as a scientist to learn what fungi are and what they do.
"What is exciting for me is that they challenge how I think about nature.
"Most frameworks for our understanding of nature are built on our understanding of flora and fauna.
"Yet fungi are very different organisms, an empire of their own that underpins pretty much every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet.
"How did we overlook something so fundamental?"
She loves the form and colour of fungi but on another level they are "profound and exciting".
"When I take people into the forest I explain how everything is based on relationships and processes and how the forest is working," Ms Pouliot said.
After the workshops I'm thrilled when people say that they can never see the forest the same way again, for example, the connection between trees and fungi.
- Ecologist, environmental photographer and author Alison Pouliot
Workshops potentially change people's thinking
Like her books, Ms Pouliot's workshops are based on science but use stories to make the science and culture of fungi accessible and approachable.
"They are hands-on and sensorial, using lots of metaphors and stories," she said.
The workshops identify which fungi are edible, toxic or used in medicine but the objective is to explain what they do and why they matter.
Ultimately they are an entry point to thinking about conservation and inspiring people to care about, and fall in love with, nature and forests.
"I want people to think about ecosystems through many lenses and why it matters we keep fungi in the soil and carbon in the soil."
She said Australia is so fortunate to have old trees and be one of only 18 nations with a mega-diversity of fungi.
As part of the Fungi Feastival, Ms Pouliot will present a seminar in Central Tilba on Friday, June 30, at 6pm, a workshop in Cobargo at 10.30am on July 1 and another at Eurobodalla Regional Botanical Garden on July 2.
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