fairy rings, mycology, and real life magic

i've been playing mushroom musume, a procedural raising game, kinda like long live the princess (the only similar game i've played), where you play as a enby loner called the recluse, and you raise (you guessed it) a mushroom creature, and then play as her for an ingame year.

the cool thing about this game is that the musume that you help develop are based on actual fungi! so my gameplay loop usually goes like this:

- i start a new run, get a new daughter, and spend upwards of an hour researching the species and adding them to my new mycological journal

complete with some drawings and info (‘ ω ‘ )

- then i actually play the game and complete the run, which is usually not very long (like 30 mins or so...)

another cool thing about this is that all of the species i've gotten grow in my country〵(^ o ^)〴! i've only had a surface interest in them so far,

but i'll probably pay more attention to the shrooms in my next hikes

now to the title. for my last run, i made some strange decisions that led to me getting a cool and creepy child, and the species name was fairy ring

(as in fairy ring mushroom - marasmius oreades). so i go on to do my research, and as i was looking at the pictures, i knew i had to make this post.

if you are like me and have never seen a fairy ring, it'll probably blow your mind

there's about 60 species that form these rings, and apparently they can grow in forests too! these rings are composed of mycorrhizal fungi (ones that form symbiotic relationships with tree roots)

while the ones that thrive in grassy areas are saprotrophic (meaning they feed on dead organic matter)

you can also see them when no mushrooms are growing (usually out of season)

as you can imagine, the rings have been the subject of mythology and tales, and i can totally understand why. as i grew up, reading tales of magic and fantasy

and playing games with all kinds of mythical creatures, i got disillusioned with the real world, because most things in fantasy aren't real (duh).

but in the last year or so, i've come to realize that there are a lot of things that look and feel like magic and myth in the real world,

you just need to see them with the eyes of a child, one learning about the world, and some whimsy in your heart.