Every pear and apricot on my property is growing mushrooms out of the fruit themsleves... tiny red pin-head sized mushrooms blanketing all the fruits. Started on one, quickly spread, then jumped ship to the apricot. My fir tree has a blight or fungus or something shooting up it's side like no tomorrow, it went from a branch to 1/3 of the tree this spring alone. In the same time this fungus spread from one pear to all of them and the apricots. My apple tree is rapidly yellowing off and the leaves are smaller then they should be (my first year here though, so idk there)
My cucumbers have something eating holes in their leaves, i thought it was 2 cycle mix sprayed from the weedeater without being careful, but it's not, it has spread to the zucchini and watermelon plants now too on some leaves
Some of my goldenrods definitely have viral or fungal related mosaic variegation on them, its spreading pretty quick.
If there is one thing i've learned accumulating large amounts of information over time, it is that fungi are not to be toyed with, they are not to be misunderstood, they likely brought life to this planet, and they can likely take life out of it if they so chose to. Mycologists will be doing some head nodding to this one too. Fungi are not the organism most of us think they are. They are very intentful creatures that play with chemistry on whims that make our best PhD chemists look like nerfs. They are the largest organisms that have ever lived and some fungi living today dwarf the biomass of the largest blue whales that have ever lived. They very thoughtfully and intelligently steer the evolution of species, and even orchestrate their own evolution and we watch them do it right inside of petri dishes. They communicate with each other in very complex ways, actively organize and repair the environmental world as a whole, and intelligently redistribute nutrients to other species of life in ways a human mind cannot even begin to comprehend. They are sentient, and they know that we are here, and they respond accordingly. All they are is a neural network and platform for redistributing and recombining nutrients. They terraformed this planet to make way for complex terrestrial life on their own, creating niches for it in the process. We are here because fungi allow us to be, im almost 100% convinced of that. The more i learn about them, the more im convinced of that.
If you want to know how panspermia likely works, well... Many species of mushrooms have evolved chitin spore casings. The strongest organic material known, and could probably survive cosmic impacts, but they wouldnt even have to. They have evolved their spores to be able to perfectly reflect DNA damaging UV and cosmic radiation, which is something that shouldnt even be able to evolve under a magnetosphere and oxygen rich atmosphere like ours. The spores are also light enough to percolate into space on air currents alone, and they do. Our planet leaves a trail of fungal spores in space everywhere it goes. The planet has never since the dawn of time here, been in the same point of space twice. Many mushrooms can produce BILLIONS of spores a minute for sometimes weeks on end. And they project them out of their gills under truly absurd g-forces. Like thousands of G's.
I both fear, and respect fungi. Very deeply. But im also about to kill every last one of those trees. And probably my vining fruits too. F*ck all that.