Long ago, there was a great battle that was forgotten with time. Long before some monkeys learned to hit each other with sticks, wars were waged on a much grander scale. Entire clades of species conducted an arms race against each other that spanned eons. In this conflict, the entirety of human history is only the blink of an eye. Simply a single moment.
In this conflict, Fungi triumphed over a foe greater than any the world had yet seen. In a time when fish had only just started to think about walking on land, trees had grown into a great power. The basis of their power was the superweapon laccase. An enzyme that would produce the chemical lignin. This chemical was powerful and sturdy, lending trees the strength they needed to stand tall and spread their canopies above all others.
But, there was another power of lignin that was much more insidious: no creature on Earth could consume it. From the largest animal to the smallest microbe, all had to leave the trees untouched. Even after a tree had fallen to other forces, the log would remain on the ground for thousands of years, inviolable.
This went on for tens of millions of years. Generation upon generation of trees lay upon the ground, their logs untouched. Occasionally, great fires would rip through a forest, burning thousands of years’ worth of deadfall. But for the most part, fallen trees simply became buried. By their fallen brethren or by mud.
Even today, humans marvel at this great mass of wood: Humans use what is left, after it was compressed by stone for hundreds of millions of years, as fuel to burn in their power plants. The coal they dig out of the ground the last reminder of the great triumph of the trees during their domination of the planet.
But, the power of the trees would not last forever. Fungi had been quietly toiling beneath the plants the whole time that they had been on land. At first, fungi were like all other organisms: even with as specialized in decomposition as they were, they could do nothing to the trees’ mighty lignin. It seemed, for a time, that the untouchability of trees would remain forever.
Eventually, fungi had a breakthrough of their own and created their own superweapon: A version of laccase that would break down lignin instead of creating it. With this enzyme as their champion, the fungi went on the attack. Over the course of millions of years, the power of the trees was broken.
The dominance of trees never recovered. To this day, white-rot fungi still proudly bear their laccase: attacking trees both living and dead, ensuring that they will never return to their former immunity. Of course, the white-rot is in turn eaten by many creatures, including humans, but that is simply the circle of life. Fungi play their critical role, which includes making sure that other organisms play theirs.
Originally published in Plants & Poetry (My Core Rises), April 2022.
Crayshack 