[bregma]

One single fungus caused Ireland to lose half its population in 1848 and caused revolutions to spread all across Europe that same year.

Now multiply that by the thousands of different fungi found in a typical garden.

[jhbadger]

Actually, the cause of the potato blight, P. infestans, wasn't a fungus at all, but actually a stramenopile, a group of microorganisms less related to us than fungi are. It was thought to be a fungus at the time because it forms strands that look like mold hyphae, but that's just convergent evolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stramenopile