Quotes About Hyphae

If bacteria can be pictured as teeming black ants under the microscope, imagine fungi as gossamer spider webs. These organisms form long threads called hyphae that stretch between plant roots. Some form into even larger masses called mycelium that can span an entire backyard.

The vast percentage of any mushroom, it turns out, lives underground, in a network of extremely fine fibers, or hyphae, that prowl the soil gathering nutrients. A single cubic centimeter of dirt might contain as much as two thousand meters of hyphae. Rome is like that, I think. The bulk of it lies underground, its history ramified so densely under there, ten centuries in every thimbleful, that no one will ever unravel it all.