Joint Essay
Space, Being and Infinity
by Alan Rayner Lere Shakunle Ted Lumley
Poem by Ketaki Kushari Dyson
Fountains of the Forest
By Alan Rayner, Oil on Board, 1998
Within and upon the branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces of forest trees and reaching out from there into air and soil are branching, enfolding, water-containing surfaces of finer scale, the mycelial networks of fungi, the 'Third Kingdom'. These networks provide a communications interface for energy transfer from neighbour to neighbour, from living to dead and from dead to living. They maintain the forest in a state of flux as they gather, conserve, explore for and recycle supplies of chemical fuel originating from photosynthesis. So, the fountains that are forest trees are connected and tapped into by the fountains of fungal networks in a moving circulation: an evolutionary spiral of differentiation and integration from past through to unpredictable future; a water delivery from the fire of the sun, through the fire of respiration, and back again to sky, contained within the contextual boundaries of a wood-wide web. (From Rayner,Presidential Address, Mycological Research, 1998).