Our fascinating, yet forgotten forest

Glow-in-the-dark fungi, parasitic orchids, slime moulds that hunt the forest floor for prey - it's a lost world hiding in plain sight. According to ecologist Robert Vennell our forests are overflowing with peculiar organisms. Specimens responsible responsible for providing us with fire, food, and medicine - they have had an outsized impact on human history and lives, yet remain, largely, in obscurity. In his latest book, The Forgotten Forest, Robert takes the reader on a bushwalk unlike any other, shining a light on the dark corners of the New Zealand bush. Robert Vennell is a curator in the Natural Science department at Auckland Museum and best-selling author of The Meaning of Trees and the Secrets of the Sea.