Unfortunately I don't have access to Art & Academe at the moment, though I suspect it has the answers.
I presume mushrooms and other fungi are affected by the Form of Herbem?
Would a Magical Focus in mushrooms be Major or Minor?
A&A does not clarify this. IMO, a minor focus would be perfectly fine, and making them plants (Herbam) would also fit. Maybe they can also be affected by Terram or Animal and there is a raging hermetic debate about their realm.
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According to the systemae naturae published by Linnaeus in the 1700's, all living things are either plants or animals. Remember this is before the discovery of bacteria and other such things. The definition according to Linnaeus, and widely accepted at his time, is as follows:
Animals can move of their own accord
Plants are green.
Linnaeus did know that this was a pretty rough definition as fungi are not green and dont move. However Linnaeus decided that fungi were plant rather than animal because they resemble plants more in other aspects, specifically they grow like plants and dont seem to react to their environment like plants do.
Even though Linnaeus lived in the 1700's his categories were widely accepted at the time and this particular definition is probably just a formalization of a what people already thought and had thought for centuries.
As for the focus I would go with minor.
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I agree, fungi are plants and therefore Herbam. Also, as a small subset of Herbam a Focus should be only Minor
Hmm a quick Google search would seem to suggest that Pliny, at least, considered them a plant though the method of generation he describes almost sounds like a type of worm - though in this instance it makes a lot of sense as mushrooms can spring up very suddenly.
In any case, I agree with them being affected by Herbam and minor focus.
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Have a look at this for fun:
" Aristotle found mushrooms puzzling but he was determined to figure out what sort of creature they were because, in his words, “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
Socrates’ student (Sic! Ouch!) observed that mushrooms reproduced quickly, and he believed that they must have very small seeds that could not be observed by the naked eye. Ultimately, Aristotle classified mushrooms as plants in his Natural Philosophy , but he was uneasy with the conclusion and urged others to look more closely at the problem."
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