'I scanned the forest floor around me. I couldn't yet see fungi, but I could smell them. Lowering my nose to the ground, I inhaled a distinctive fungal funk. I rolled over some bark and there they were! Gossamer threads of mycelia wended their way through the layers, weaving them together. Soon these furtive fungi would fashion their mycelia into mushrooms and heave their way through the earth.'

This book is about fungi, and the photography of fungi. The title Funga Obscura unites the two. Beginning in elemental landscapes of ice and rock, the book traces the evolutionary path of fungi as enablers of life on land, and creators of soils and forests. Crossing continents and ecosystems, we navigate lichen-covered landscapes, crawl in the fungal undergrowth, scale glacial extremes and duck between rainforest shadows.

Alison Pouliot, ecologist and environmental photographer, captures these remarkable lifeforms in this visual love letter to fungi.

'A gallery of exquisite photographic artworks; a celebration of the diversity, eccentricity, beauty and resilience of fungi; a meditation on relationships between all living things, and an invitation to wonder about our own place in the natural world.' Jeanette Miller, Mornington Peninsula Landcare

'This festival of fungi encompasses the cute and the creepy and reminds us that fungus is a vital component of life on Earth.' Newcastle Herald

'Funga Obscura is a tour de force that celebrates the beauty and complexity of fungi while challenging readers to look more closely at the world around them. Alison Pouliot has crafted a work that is as educational as it is inspiring, as artistic as it is scientific.' Australian Garden History Society