Sunhawk

“Most plants—from a potted snapdragon to a giant sequoia—will develop differently when grown with different communities of mycorrhizal fungus. Basil plants, for example, produce different profiles of the aromatic oils that make up their flavor when grown with different mycorrhizal strains. Some fungi have been found to make tomatoes sweeter than others; some change the essential oil profile of fennel, coriander, and mint; some increase the concentration of iron and carotenoids in lettuce leaves, the antioxidant activity in artichoke heads, or the concentrations of medicinal compounds in Saint-John’s-wort and echinacea.”
― Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Mark Kenyon, That Wild Country: An Epic Journey through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands

“These haymeadow days were the Arcadian age for marsh dwellers. Man and beast, plant and soil lived on and with each other in mutual toleration, to the mutual benefit of all. The marsh might have kept on producing hay and prairie chickens, deer and muskrat, crane-music and cranberries forever. The new overlords did not understand this. They did not include soil, plants, or birds in their ideas of mutuality. The dividends of such a balanced economy were too modest. They envisaged farms not only around, but in the marsh. An epidemic of ditch-digging and land-booming set in. The marsh was gridironed with drainage canals, speckled with new fields and farmsteads.”
― Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology

“We don’t make reality. We just evade it. So far. By looting natural capital and hiding the costs. But the bill is coming, and we won’t be able to pay.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory