In the gardening world, the vegetative part of fungus tends to be an out-of-sight thing. While healthy soils can be teeming with these fine branching threads that break down organic materials and forge mutually beneficial relationships with plants, mycelium is rarely a garden’s main event.

But in design circles, this mass of hyphae is sometimes first and foremost. Mycelium has spread out of the soil and into the studio, where it is being deployed as one of the world’s great recyclers.

Mycelium, from fungus, has spread out of the soil and into the studio, where it is being deployed as one of the world’s great recyclers.

A San Francisco startup has been inoculating a mix of corn cobs, paper pulp, sawdust and rice hulls with the mycelium of the medicinal mushroom Ganodermalucidum to transform waste products into something that looks and feels like leather.

A firm in New York has been turning out mycelium-generated packaging, scientists in the Netherlands have gone in for mycelium slippers, while a German outfit has been making insulation panels by mixing the myecelium of Pleurotus Ostreatus (or the oyster mushroom) with cardboard.