Mushrooms and Fungi are the neglected geniuses of the plant world, but they are completely essential to life, the rest of the natural world is dependent on them for their health and viability.

Also, Roger Phillips was a contributor and co-author of many scientific and recreational articles. His entitled works, such as “ Fungi will have a role in ridding the world of plastic” and “ How to cut grocery bills and eat healthy.” Also, you can read his book about Mushrooms and all their types. It contains over 1250 photographs of mushrooms and fungi, often showing the specimens in various stages of growth, including all the latest botanical and common names and current ecological information on endangered species. They gain their supplies of sugars and other organic matter by breaking down the organic matter in dead wood and leaves, rather than direct from the plants as in symbiosis.

Phillips accepts their compliments modestly while polishing off his stew – a dish I feel I could eat every winter lunchtime and never tire of. There is some discussion of the origin of the chanterelles – Portugal at this time of year – and we then wander to the edge of the market to get a glass of wine and sit and talk about the mulchy beginnings of his first love. Phillips trained at Chelsea School of Art from where he entered a career in advertising culminating in the position of art director at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. He left O&M to start a career as a freelance photographer, winning many awards before turning his photographic talents to the world of natural history. He presented two six-part television series, 1994's The Quest for the Rose for BBC Television and, in 1995, The 3,000 Mile Garden for PBS. [2] [3] Phillips has been a natural nonconformist. Three months into his national service in the RAF in Canada, he says, he somehow persuaded an air vice marshal to let him go home on the basis that he didn’t want to be trained to kill people. He later gave up work as an art director at the ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, to become a freelance photographer, concentrating on plants. His guiding philosophy has always been: “If it’s not fun, don’t do it.” That spirit has taken him all over the world – adventures in wild food that are celebrated in his latest book, The Worldwide Forager.

He did his national service with the RAF in Canada but resigned his commission on pacifist principles and returned to London, where he worked in a hospital and took a course at the Chelsea School of Art. “Roger was lively and gregarious,” remembers his contemporary Alan Gilchrist, “contributing regularly to theatrical events, and was the art editor of the school’s magazine Concetto.” A friend and fellow conspirator in cultural interventions was Brian Innes, whose band Roger booked for a school ball even before they became the Temperance Seven. Roger was a natural to present TV programmes about nature, and showed how to slow-cook a ham in compost

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The actual fungus is a vast network of very fine fibres, called hyphae, and a mass of hyphae is called mycelium. The single fibres are too fine to be seen with the human eye and thus, infinitely more capable than plant roots of finding water supplies, trace elements and minerals essential to the health of the plant or tree they grow in symbiosis with. Roger Howard Phillips MBE (16 December 1932 – 15 November 2021) was a British photographer, botanist and writer. [1] Biography [ edit ] Roger Phillips is one of the world’s leading mushroom specialists with over 40 years of expertise in studying fungi in the wild. Roger’s book, ‘Mushrooms’, first published in 2006, has been hugely successful, with more than 2 million copies sold worldwide in 7 European languages. In the meantime, he follows Voltaire’s dictum of “tending his own garden”. In London this involves organising the planting and upkeep of the communal plot in Ecclestone Square where he lives; and also doing a bit of experimenting at a small cottage he owns in Wiltshire. He cooks and eats outside whenever he can; his last birthday meal involved – “bugger the neighbours” – a wood fire on the balcony of his flat.