There are a lot of mushrooms in Elden Ring. I'm not just talking about the item, which can be found throughout the Lands Between. There's loads of mushroom imagery throughout the game, but perhaps none so much as the Goddess of Rot herself, Melania.

Malenia's bloom appears to be modeled after a specific species of fungus called gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, or more commonly, Cedar Apple Rush. This fungal infection parasitizes cedar and apple trees with reddish "flowers" that are actually spore-releasing galls. The spores then infect leaves, which can spread to the whole tree, killing it. As noted by Reddit user Marshmellow_Bot, Cedar Apple Rush looks almost exactly like Melania's rot bloom in Elden Ring.

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And just like Malenia, killing Cedar Apple Rush can be just as hard. More than one Reddit user agreed that treating infected trees can be difficult, and if not done promptly, can ruin entire orchards.

But Elden Ring's mushroom theme goes way beyond Melania. YouTuber Ziostorm noted that there are way more mushroom analogs present in Elden Ring. He noted that not only does Melania's Bloom look like Cedar Apple Rush, but that the Twin Fingers resemble another fungal species called Dead Man's Fingers. The Erdtree looks like a giant Chantrelle mushroom, Godwyn's corpse looks like an Oyster mushroom, Ranni looks like an Indigo Milk Cap mushroom, and the starry "sky" of Nokron, Eternal City could be explained away by the bioluminescent spores of a particularly colorful species of slime mold.

Ziostorm went even further to explain that all of Elden Ring could be explained as a giant turf war between mushrooms. Various in-game items confirm that the Erdtree and the Elden Beast arrived in the Lands Between from outer space, and from the Golden Amber item description, he posits that the Erdtree didn't sprout from a seed but from a fungal spore. It then spread across the Lands Between, infecting everything in a mycelial network that drew in corpses from burial grounds to sustain itself.

Mushrooms are sometimes called "envoys of the trees" because this mycelial network allows trees to communicate, sharing information through an intricate root system. This would also explain why the Two Fingers and Three Fingers are called "envoys" for their respective gods.

There's more, but you'll have to watch Ziostorm's video for the rest. Just don't be surprised when mushrooms appear in even greater abundance when Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC arrives.

Most of us consider Malenia to be Elden Ring's hardest boss, but not everyone. There's at least one player that's managed to get so good at killing Melania, they can do it in just over ten seconds.

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