Mushrooms—ignored by many, reviled by some—may turn out to be important keys to both human health and planetary health. Their indispensable role in recycling organic matter, especially in forests, has long been known. But how many people realize that trees and other green plants could not grow and reach maturity without symbiotic associations with mushrooms, at least with mycelium, the network of fungal threads in soil that act as interfaces between plant roots and nutrients? A mushroom is the reproductive structure or fruiting body of mycelium. Mycelium runs through our world, performing many other feats as well, but it is hidden and inconspicuous-a strange life form that has not attracted the same scientific attention as micro-organisms or plants or animals. Even conventional mycologists hardly recognize its larger implications and possibilities. (Location 49)
Fungi have evolved novel chemical defenses, a range of antibiotics that are often active against not only bacteria but also viruses and other infectious agents that cause disease in humans. (Location 61)
Another of Paul’s Big Ideas is that mycelium can be selected and trained to break down toxic waste, reducing it to harmless metabolites. He calls this strategy mycoremediation and has demonstrated its practicality in cleaning up oil spills. He suggests that our mushroom allies may even be able to detoxify chemical warfare agents. This is one facet of a larger strategy that Paul calls mycorestoration, the use of fungi to improve the health of the environment: by filtering water, helping trees to grow in forests and plants to grow in gardens, and by controlling insect pests. The last possibility is especially noteworthy because it has the potential to neutralize pests like termites and fire ants by means that are completely nontoxic to human beings. (Location 64)
This new book is designed to show readers how to grow mushrooms in gardens, yards, and woods for the purpose of reaping both personal and planetary rewards. (Location 79)
As you will discover, mushrooms help us reconnect to nature in profound ways. Mushrooms, mysterious and once feared, can be powerful allies for protecting the planet from the ecological injury we inflict. (Location 80)
More specifically, this book focuses on healing the planet using mycelial membranes, also known as mycelium, a fungal network of threadlike cells; it is a mycological manual for rescuing ecosystems. Engaging mycelium for healing habitats is what I call “mycorestoration.” The umbrella concept of mycorestoration includes the selective use of fungi for mycofiltration, mycoforestry, mycoremediation, and mycopesticides. Mycofiltration uses mycelium to catch and reduce silt and catch upstream contaminants. Mycoforestry uses mycelium and mushrooms to enhance forest health. Mycoremediation neutralizes toxins. Mycopesticides refers to the use of fungi to help influence and control pest populations. This quartet of strategies can be used to improve soil health, support diverse food chains, and increase sustainability in the biosphere. (Location 82)
I contend that the planet’s health actually depends on our respect for fungi. This book will show how you can help save the world using mushrooms. (Location 93)
May future generations continue to build upon this foundation of knowledge to help the health of people and our planet. (Location 110)
There are more species of fungi, bacteria, and protozoa in a single scoop of soil than there are species of plants and vertebrate animals in all of North America. And of these, fungi are the grand recyclers of our planet, the mycomagicians disassembling large organic molecules into simpler forms, which in turn nourish other members of the ecological community. Fungi are the interface organisms between life and death. (Location 113)
Look under any log lying on the ground and you will see fuzzy, cobweblike growths called mycelium, a fine web of cells which, in one phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. This fine web of cells courses through virtually all habitats—like mycelial tsunamis—unlocking nutrient sources stored in plants and other organisms, building soils. The activities of mycelium help heal and steer ecosystems on their evolutionary path, cycling nutrients through the food chain. As land masses and mountain ranges form, successive generations of plants and animals are born, live, and die. Fungi are keystone species that create ever-thickening layers of soil, which allow future plant and animal generations to flourish. Without fungi, all ecosystems would fail. (Location 116)
Mycelium, constantly on the move, can travel across landscapes up to several inches a day to weave a living network over the land. (Location 123)
Mushroom spawn lets us recycle garden waste, wood, and yard debris, thereby creating mycological membranes that heal habitats suffering from poor nutrition, stress, and toxic waste. In this sense, mushrooms emerge as environmental guardians in a time critical to our mutual evolutionary survival. (Location 125)
When we irresponsibly exploit the Earth, disease, famine, and ecological collapse result. We face the possibility of being rejected by the biosphere as a virulent organism. But if we act as a responsible species, nature will not evict us. (Location 133)
Our fungal friends equip us with tools to act responsibly and repair our shared environment, leading the way to habitat recovery. So knowing how to work with fungi—by custom pairing fungal species with plant communities—is critical for our survival. (Location 135)
I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges. These networks not only survive, but sometimes expand to thousands of acres in size, achieving the greatest mass of any individual organism on this planet. (Location 139)
The mycelial network is composed of a membrane of interweaving, continuously branching cell chains, only one cell wall thick. (Location 145)
Animals are more closely related to fungi than to any other kingdom. More than 600 million years ago we shared a common ancestry. Fungi evolved a means of externally digesting food by secreting acids and enzymes into their immediate environs and then absorbing nutrients using netlike cell chains. Fungi marched onto land more than a billion years ago. Many fungi partnered with plants, which largely lacked these digestive juices. Mycologists believe that this alliance allowed plants to inhabit land around 700 million years ago. Many millions of years later, one evolutionary branch of fungi led to the development of animals. The branch of fungi leading to animals evolved to capture nutrients by surrounding their food with cellular sacs, essentially primitive stomachs. As species emerged from aquatic habitats, organisms adapted means to prevent moisture loss. In terrestrial creatures, skin composed of many layers of cells emerged as a barrier against infection. Taking a different evolutionary path, the mycelium retained its netlike form of interweaving chains of cells and went underground, forming a vast food web upon which life flourished. (Location 147)
Mushrooms evolved their basic forms well before the most distant mammal ancestors of humans.) Mycelium steers the course of ecosystems by favoring successions of species. Ultimately, mycelium prepares its immediate environment for its benefit by growing ecosystems that fuel its food chains. (Location 169)
Ecotheorist James Lovelock, together with Lynn Margulis, came up with the Gaia hypothesis, which postulated that the planet’s biosphere intelligently piloted its course to sustain and breed new life. I see mycelium as the living network that manifests the natural intelligence imagined by Gaia theorists. The mycelium is an exposed sentient membrane, aware and responsive to changes in its environment. As hikers, deer, or insects walk across these sensitive filamentous nets, they leave impressions, and mycelia sense and respond to these movements. A complex and resourceful structure for sharing information, mycelium can adapt and evolve through the ever-changing forces of nature. I especially feel that this is true upon entering a forest after a rainfall when, I believe, interlacing mycelial membranes awaken. These sensitive mycelial membranes act as a collective fungal consciousness. As mycelia’s metabolisms surge, they emit attractants, imparting sweet fragrances to the forest and connecting ecosystems and their species with scent trails. Like a matrix, a biomolecular superhighway, the mycelium is in constant dialogue with its environment, reacting to and governing the flow of essential nutrients cycling through the food chain. (Location 175)
Carbon-rich mushroom mycelia unfold into complex food webs, crumbling rocks as they grow, creating dynamic soils that support diverse populations of organisms. (Location 189)
I believe that the mycelium operates at a level of complexity that exceeds the computational powers of our most advanced supercomputers. I see the myce-lium as the Earth’s natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross-species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape. A new bioneering science could be born, dedicated to programming myconeurological networks to monitor and respond to threats to environments. Mycelial webs could be used as information platforms for mycoengineered ecosystems. (Location 198)
The idea that a cellular organism can demonstrate intelligence might seem radical if not for work by researchers like Toshuyiki Nakagaki (2000). He placed a maze over a petri dish filled with the nutrient agar and introduced nutritious oat flakes at an entrance and exit. He then inoculated the entrance with a culture of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum under sterile conditions. As it grew through the maze it consistently chose the shortest route to the oat flakes at the end, rejecting dead ends and empty exits, demonstrating a form of intelligence, according to Nakagami and his fellow researchers. If this is true, then the neural nets of microbes and mycelia may be deeply intelligent. (Location 213)
Fungi may not be unique to Earth. Scientists theorize that life is spread throughout the cosmos, and that it is likely to exist wherever water is found in a liquid state. (Location 232)
Now that we have landed rovers on Mars, NASA takes seriously the unknown consequences that our microbes will have on seeding other planets. Spores have no borders. (Location 244)
The Mycelial Archetype Nature tends to build upon its successes. The mycelial archetype can be seen throughout the universe: in the patterns of hurricanes, dark matter, and the Internet. The similarity in form to mycelium may not be merely a coincidence. Biological systems are influenced by the laws of physics, and it may be that mycelium exploits the natural momentum of matter, just like salmon take advantage of the tides. The architecture of mycelium resembles patterns predicted in string theory, and astrophysicists theorize that the most energy-conserving forms in the universe will be organized as threads of matterenergy. The arrangement of these strings resembles the architecture of mycelium. (Location 250)
I believe that the structure of the Internet is simply an archetypal form, the inevitable consequence of a previously proven evolutionary model, which is also seen in the human brain; diagrams of computer networks bear resemblance to both mycelium and neurological arrays in the mammalian brain (Location 256)
As an evolutionary strategy, mycelial architecture is amazing: one cell wall thick, in direct contact with myriad hostile organisms, and yet so pervasive that a single cubic inch of topsoil contains enough fungal cells to stretch more than 8 miles if placed end to end. I calculate that every footstep I take impacts more than 300 miles of mycelium. These fungal fabrics run through the top few inches of virtually all landmasses that support life, sharing the soil with legions of other organisms. (Location 263)
Year-round, fungi decompose and recycle plant debris, filter microbes and sediments from runoff, and restore soil. (Location 268)
In the near future, we can orchestrate selected mushroom species to manage species successions. While mycelium nourishes plants, mushrooms themselves are nourishment for worms, insects, mammals, bacteria, and other, parasitic fungi. I believe that the occurrence and decomposition of a mushroom… (Location 271)
Wherever a catastrophe creates a field of debris—whether from downed trees or an oil spill—many fungi… (Location 274)
Fungi outnumber plants at a ratio of at least 6 to 1. About 10 percent of fungi are what we call mushrooms (Hawksworth 2001), and only about 10 percent of the mushroom species have been identified, meaning that our taxonomic knowledge of mushrooms is exceeded by our ignorance by at least one order of magnitude. The surprising diversity of fungi speaks to the complexity needed for a healthy environment. What has been become increasingly clear to mycologists is that protecting the health of the environment is directly related to our understanding of the roles of its complex fungal populations. Our bodies and our environs are habitats with immune systems; fungi are a common bridge between the two. All habitats depend directly on these fungal allies, without which the life-support system of the Earth would soon collapse. Mycelial networks hold soils together and aerate them. Fungal enzymes, acids, and antibiotics dramatically affect the condition and structure of soils (see figure 25). In the wake of catastrophes, fungal diversity helps restore devastated habitats. Evolutionary trends generally lead to increased bio-diversity. However, due to human activities we are… (Location 277)
We have now learned that we must tread softly on the web of life, or else it… (Location 291)
When the natural benefits of fungi have been repressed, the perceived need for artificial fertilizers increases, creating a cycle of chemical dependence, ultimately eroding sustainability. However, we can create mycologically sustainable environments by introducing plantpartnering fungi (mycorrhizal and endophytic) in combination with mulching with saprophytic mushroom mycelia. The results of these fungal activities include healthy soil, biodynamic communities,… (Location 294)
Note: Mulch
Living in harmony with our natural environment is key to our health as individuals and as a species. We are a reflection of the… (Location 298)
Enlisting fungi as allies, we can offset the environmental damage inflicted by humans by accelerating organic decomposition of the massive fields of debris we create—through everything from clear-cutting forests to constructing cities. Our relatively sudden rise as a destructive species is stressing the fungal recycling systems of nature. The cascade of toxins and debris generated by humans destabilizes nutrient return cycles, causing crop failure, global warming, climate change and, in a worst-case scenario, quickening the pace towards ecocatastrophes of our own making. As ecological disrupters, humans challenge the immune systems of our environment beyond their limits. The rule of nature is that when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its host environment, its food chains collapse and diseases emerge to devastate the population of the threatening organism. I believe we can come… (Location 300)
Although we notice mushrooms when they pop up, their sudden appearance is the completion of cellular events largely hidden from view—until… (Location 309)
Mushrooms reproduce through microscopic spores, visible as dust when they collect en masse. When the moisture, temperature, and nutrients are right, spores freed from a mushroom (essentially mushroom seeds) germinate into threads of cells called hyphae. As each hypha grows and branches, it forms connections with other hyphae from compatible spores to create a mycelial mat, which matures, gathering nutrients and moisture. From mycelium, cells aggregate to form a primordium—called “pinheads” or baby… (Location 314)
Mushrooms can be divided into 2 basic categories depending upon how they form: predeterminant or indeterminant. Most mushrooms are predeterminant, meaning the stem, cap, and gills preform in the primordial state. If the… (Location 322)
Less common are the indeterminant mushrooms, including many Ganodermas, Phaeolus schweinitzii, and the rare Bridgeoporus nobilissimus. Their mycelia form primordia that envelop sticks and twigs as they grow. If these young mushrooms are damaged at this stage and go on to recover, they mature with little trace of wounds. (Location 335)
Mushrooms display many artful forms, adapted for the purpose of dispersing spores: classic button mushroom, hoof-shaped conk (which has many pores, and hence is called a polypore), ridge-forming chanterelle, toothed Hericium, coral-like Ramaria, leafy Sparassis, and cup-forming Auricularia. These mushrooms, so diverse in shape, produce spores from similar clublike structures called basidia, which arise from a specialized layer of cells called the hymenium. In oyster and button mushrooms, the hymenial layer covers the surfaces of the gills. Despite their anatomical differences, these mushrooms produce microscopic spores in a similar way. (Location 337)
Many mushrooms launch spores from basidia, which populate the gills on oyster mushrooms, for instance, and emerge in increasing quantities as the mushroom body matures. The vast majority of species produce 4-spored basidia, which are jettisoned in pairs with enough force to throw them inches away from the mushroom (see figures 18 and 19). Nicholas Money (1998) measured this force as 25,000 g’s, approximately 10,000 times the forces experienced by the space shuttle astronauts escaping the gravitational pull of the Earth to obtain orbit. (Location 346)
Although spores tend to fall near their parent mushroom, trails of spores can sometimes be seen wafting in the air. Correspondingly, spores tend to be most concentrated closest to the ripening mushroom, with the concentration decreasing exponentially with distance. However, many insects and mammals also participate in distribution. Drawn by the mushrooms’ scent, insects use them as a home for their larvae, which then grow up and carry spores with them when they leave the nest. Mammals eat mushrooms for nourishment, and many spores survive digestion and are dispersed through the animals’ waste. (Location 351)
That so many mushrooms compete for distribution and safe harbors for their spores may be one reason why so many spores are necessary. David Arora reports in Mushrooms Demystified (1986) that a large Ganoderma applanatum is estimated to liberate up to 30 billion spores a day, and more than 5 trillion a year! (See (Location 360)
From the artist conk featured in the previous image, we took a thumbnail-size slice of tissue back to the laboratory, where we broke it in half, cut out a tiny fragment, and transferred it to a nutrient-filled petri dish to start a culture. The resulting mushroom that grew is genetically identical to the wild artist conk from which it came. The original mushroom, whose small wound soon healed over, still survives in the old-growth forest. I encourage such low-impact practices for collecting cultures without removing the mushrooms from their ecosystem. (Location 371)
Generally, when a mature mushroom stops producing spores, it becomes an essential food source for people, deer, bears, squirrels, voles, and insects from gnats to arthropods, and no doubt influences legions of other organisms in the food chain. (Location 378)
Once spores are produced, most are quick to germinate. The spores of some mushrooms, like oysters, can germinate as soon as they leave the basidia and find a hospitable niche, whereas others, like shiitake, germinate more readily after drying out and then rehydrating. (Location 380)
Mycelia can be found under practically any log, stick, bale of straw, cardboard, or other organic material on the ground. In a gram of this myceliated soil, more than 1 mile of cells form; in a cubic inch more than 8 miles. (Location 390)
You can grow mushrooms from spores or tissue. If you are creating your own cultures, it is essential that you use mushrooms that are fresh. If fresh mushrooms are not available, you can purchase cultures (spawn) or spores from commercial sources. (Location 394)
FIGURES 25, 26, AND 27 The path of decomposition: wood chips; wood chips colonized by mycelium; myceliated wood chips after digestion by worms and other organisms. (Location 404)
Mushrooms can be placed in 4 basic categories: saprophytic, parasitic, mycorrhizal, and endophytic, depending upon how they nourish themselves. (Location 410)
Saprophytic Mushrooms: The Decomposers Saprophytic mushrooms, the decomposers, steer the course for proliferating biological communities, shaping and forming the first menus in the food web from dead plants, insects, and other animals. Most gourmet and medicinal mushrooms are wood decomposers, the premier recyclers on the planet; building soils is the primary outcome of the activities of these saprophytic fungi, whose filamentous mycelial networks weave through and between the cell walls of plants. (Location 419)
When organic matter falls from the canopy of trees and plants overhead onto the forest floor, the decomposers residing in the soil process this newly available food. (Competition is intense: on the forest floor, a single “habitat” can actually be matrices of fungal networks sharing one space.) These fungi secrete enzymes and acids that degrade large molecules of dead plants into simpler molecules, which the fungi can reassemble into building blocks, such as polysaccharides, for cell walls. From dead plants, fungi recycle carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosporus, and minerals into nutrients for living plants, insects, and other organisms sharing that habitat. (Location 423)
In fact, most plants are supported by vast and complex colonies of fungi working in concert. (Location 429)
Primary, secondary, and tertiary decomposers can all coexist in one location. Primary and secondary decomposers such as oyster and meadow mushrooms are the easiest to cultivate. (Location 434)
Primary Decomposers These saprophytes are typically the first to grow on a twig, a blade of grass, a chip of wood, a log, a stump, or a dead insect or other animal. Primary decomposers are typically fast growing, sending out rapidly extending strands of mycelium that quickly attach to and decompose plant tissue. (Location 435)
Secondary Decomposers Secondary decomposers rely on the activity of primary fungi that initially, although partially, break down plant and animal tissues. Secondary decomposers all work in concert with actinomycetes, other bacteria, and fungi, including yeasts, in soil in the forest floor or in compost piles. Heat, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and other gases are emitted as by-products of the composting process. Once the microorganisms (especially actinomycetes) in the compost piles complete their life cycles, the temperature drops, encouraging a new wave of secondary decomposers. (Location 439)
Cultivators exploit this sequence to grow the white button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus), the most widely cultivated mushroom in the world. Other secondary saprophytes that compete with compost-grown mushrooms are inky caps (belonging to the family Coprinaceae, which includes the choice, edible shaggy mane [Coprinus comatus] and others including the hallucinogenic Panaeolus subbalteatus and Panaeolus cyanescens); and, in outdoor wood chip beds, the ambiguous Stropharia (Stropharia ambigua). Industrial growers try to thwart these undesired invaders by heat steaming their composts to temperatures inhospitable to their spores. (Location 447)
Tertiary Decomposers This difficult-to-categorize group includes fungi found toward the end of the decomposition process. They thrive in habitats created by primary and secondary decomposers over a period of years, often popping up from soils holding little decomposable material. (Location 466)
The division between secondary and tertiary decomposers is often obscure; mycologists simply call tertiary decomposers “soil dwellers,” for lack of a better description. (Location 469)
Some mushrooms initially act as parasites, and once they have killed their hosts, they act like saprophytes, growing on their dead remains. (Location 470)
Parasitic Mushrooms: Blights of the Forest or Agents for Habitat Restoration? Parasites are predators that endanger the host’s health. In the past, foresters saw all parasitic fungi as hostile to the long-term health of forests. Although they do parasitize trees, they nourish other organisms. (Location 473)
Parasitic fungi such as the honey mushroom, which can destroy thousands of acres of forest, are stigmatized as blights. However, more foresters are realizing that a rotting tree in the midst of a canopied forest is, in fact, more supportive of biodiversity than a living tree. (Location 476)
Parasitic mushrooms may be nature’s way of selecting the strongest plants and repairing damaged habitats. Ultimately, parasitic mushrooms set the stage for the revival of weakened habitats that are too stressed to thrive. (Location 478)
One mycelial mat from a honey mushroom (Armillaria bulbosa) made national headlines when a specimen was found in a Michigan forest that covered 37 acres, weighed at least 50 tons, and was estimated to be 1,500 years old. In Oregon, a far larger honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) mycelial mat found on a mountaintop covers more than 2,400 acres and is possibly more than 2,200 years old (see figure 60). Each time this fungus blight sweeps through, nurse logs are created, soil depth increases, and centimeters of soil accumulate to create ever-richer habitats where once only barren rock stood. (Location 481)
What makes mushroom mycelia different from the mycelia from mold fungi is that some mushroom species can grow into massive membranes, thousands of acres in size, hundreds of tons in mass, and thousands of years old. (Location 487)
Most parasitic fungi, however, are microfungi, barely visible to the naked eye, but en masse they inflict cankers and lesions on the shoots and leaves of trees. Often their prominence in a middle-aged forest is symptomatic of other imbalances in the ecosystem, such as acid rain, groundwater pollution, and insect damage. (Location 495)
Mycorrhizal mushrooms (myco means “mushroom”; rhizal means “related to roots”), such as matsutake, boletus, and chanterelles, form mutually beneficial relationships with pines and other plants. In fact, most plants from grasses to Douglas firs have mycorrhizal partners. The mycelia of fungal species that form exterior sheaths around the roots of partner plants are termed ectomycorrhizal. (Location 505)
The mycorrhizal fungi that invade the interior root cells of host plants are labeled endomycorrhizal, although currently the preferred term for these fungi is vesicular arbuscular mycorrhizae (VAM). Both plant and mycorrhizae benefit from this association. (Location 508)
Because ectomycorrhizal mycelium grows beyond the plant’s roots, it brings distant nutrients and moisture to the host plant, extending the absorption zone well beyond the root structure. The mycelium dramatically increases the plant’s ingestion of nutrients, nitrogenous compounds, and essential elements (phosphorus, copper, and zinc) as it decomposes surrounding debris. (Location 509)
David Perry (1994) postulates that the surface area—hence its absorption capability—of mycorrhizal fungi may be 10 to 100 times greater than the surface area of leaves in a forest. As a result, the growth of plant partners is accelerated. Plants with mycorrhizal fungal partners can also resist diseases far better than those without. Fungi benefit from the relationship because it gives them access to plant-secreted sugars, mostly hexoses that the fungi convert to mannitols, arabitols, and erythritols. (Location 512)
One of the most exciting discoveries in the field of mycology is that the mycorrhizae can transport nutrients to trees of different species. One mushroom species can connect many acres of a forest in a continuous network of cells. (Location 516)
My practice is to pick no more than 25 percent of the mushrooms of a wild patch, leaving young ones, and when encountering pairs of mushrooms, only pick one of them. (Location 533)
The Simard experiment showed that a common mycelial net could unite 3 species of trees and underscored a remarkable ability of mycorrhizal fungi: mycorrhizae can keep diverse species of trees in forests fed, particularly younger trees struggling for sunlight. Now we have a better understanding of how saplings survive in the shadows of elder trees that tower overhead and block out essential light. The fact that a single mycorrhizal mushroom nutritionally supported 2 different trees—one a conifer and the other deciduous—shows that the mycelium guards the forest’s overall health, budgeting and multidirectionally allocating nutrients. (Location 535)
Most ecologists now recognize that a forest’s vitality is directly related to the presence, abundance, and variety of mycelial associates. (Location 546)
I doubt a forest can be defined without its fungi. (Location 549)
This symbiotic pairing is the norm in nature, not the exception. (Location 553)
Growing mycorrhizal mushrooms has proved to be a greater challenge than first anticipated due to the complex interdependencies in which fungi play a critical role. (Location 554)
Nuances of climate, soil chemistry, and predominant microflora limit our success in cultivating mycorrhizal mushrooms in natural settings. (Location 556)
Species native to a region are more likely than imported species to adapt readily to these designed habitats. (Location 558)
Even if you are not successful in growing truffle mushrooms, the trees benefit from this pairing with the introduced mycelium. (Location 595)
Habitats should be selected on the basis of their parallels in the wild. (Location 597)
Casting a spore mass of chanterelles into a forest similar to one where chanterelles naturally proliferate is obviously the best choice. However, the success rate is not high: even tree roots confirmed to be mycorrhized with gourmet mycelia will not necessarily yield harvestable mushrooms. (Location 598)
Given the long time involved in honing laboratory techniques, I favor the low-tech approach and traditional method of planting seedlings adjacent to known producers of chanterelles, matsutake, truffles, and boletus and then replanting the seedlings several years later. (Location 618)
Since certain fungi function as natural bactericides and fungicides, some insects engage them as allies in an effort to counter infections from hostile bacteria and other fungi. (Location 632)
The mutualism between ants, mushrooms, and bacteria is a useful model for how we humans can live in closer harmony with our environment. Both ants and people benefit from the guardianship of mycelium—by partnering with fungi, many organisms, including humans, can resist disease. (Location 643)
Endophytes are primarily benevolent, nonmycorrhizal fungi that partner with many plants, from grasses to trees. Their mycelia thread between cell walls but don’t enter them, enhancing a plant’s growth and ability to absorb nutrients, while staving off parasites, infections, and predation from insects, other fungi, and herbivores. Generally, endophytes are not true saprophytes or parasites but are in a class of their own. (Location 656)
Because some grasses produce more mycotoxins than others in the same habitat, cattle may sometimes get a chemical cocktail but other times not, making it more difficult for them to learn which grasses to avoid. Nevertheless, endophytes, which were once thought to be pathogens, are increasingly viewed as engaging the plant in a mutually beneficial relationship. In a 2003 experiment in Panama, researchers found that when endophyte-free leaves from the chocolate-producing cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) were inoculated with endophytes, leaf necrosis and mortality declined threefold, suggesting a biodefensive effect is possible against other pathogens such as Phytophthora, the genus responsible for sudden oak death—a disease devastating California’s native oak population. (Arnold et al. 2003). Spores from endophytes compete with many other free-flying fungal spores. According to one estimate, more than 10,000 spores of fungi land on each leaf per day. Amidst such competition, friendly fungi taking up residence is actually an asset to plants otherwise subject to pathogenic assault. (Location 669)
with hospitable plants (Arnold and Herre 2003). Wheat farmers benefit from the endophyte Piriformospora indica. The basidiomycete of this species has yet to be identified, so it’s referred to as imperfect (in the mycological world, this means that the fungus has no sexual phase or the sexual phase has not yet been discovered). This species is a root-based endophyte that promotes the growth of wheat shoots and roots and is capable of increasing leaf and seed production by more than 30 percent while shielding roots from infection by pathogenic microbes. Furthermore, seedlings paired with this mutualist successfully germinated 95 percent of the time, compared to only 57 percent for seedlings without this species. Root and shoot mass also doubled (Varma et al. 1999). This species has also demonstrated growth-enhancing properties when paired with maize (Zea mays), tobacco (Nicotiana tobaccum), and parsley (Petroselinum crispum). This fungus is easy to cultivate in the laboratory and widely coexists with many grasses. Clearly, pairing this and other endophytes with agricultural crops can increase yield, decrease disease, and reduce the need for fertilizers and insecticides. Endophytic fungi may have other practical applications in agriculture. Joan Henson and other researchers (2004) filed a patent application using a Curvularia species isolated from grasses in the geothermal zones of Yellowstone and Lassen Volcanic national parks. This fungus qualifies as an extremophile—a thermally tolerant species that grows at the far fringe of temperatures where life can be found—and confers some tolerance to drought and heat to the host plant. Henson’s research showed that grasses inoculated with this endophyte survived temporary exposure to extraordinarily high temperatures—158°F or 70°C—while those without shriveled and died. (Location 677)
Some wood conks once seen as parasites on trees may in fact be symbiotic endophytes. (Location 698)
The fact that one species can perform separate but complementary functions in the forest suggests that the species may play a larger role in the forest than is presently understood. (Location 705)
I believe fungi have evolved to support habitats over the long term, protecting generations hundreds of years into the future. Saprophytic mushrooms gobble up debris fallen from the trees and prevent invasion by parasites. The mycorrhizae channel nutrients, expand root zones, and guard against parasites. Similarly, endophytic fungi, less well understood, chemically repel bacteria, insects, and other fungi. (Location 729)
Forest dwellers long ago discovered the value of medicinal mushrooms for the healing of both the body and the forest. Sadly, most of our ancestors’ empirical knowledge is lost, but what little survives hints at a rich, albeit vulnerable, resource. The science of soils—mapping the matrix of plant, animal, and microbial communities in a habitat—remains in its infancy. (Location 739)
A forest ecosystem cannot be defined without its fungi because they govern the transition between life and death and the building of soils, all the while fueling numerous life cycles. (Location 743)
Another example of the potential medicinal value of old-growth-forest fungi is my discovery that an extract of the mycelium from the agarikon polypore mushroom Fomitopsis officinalis (see figures 53, 54, 55) protects human blood cells from infection by orthopox viruses, the family of viruses that includes smallpox (Stamets 2005b). Strains of agarikon varied in their potency. (Location 786)
With the increasing threat of bioterrorism—especially from viruses like smallpox and bacteria like anthrax—protecting our fungal genetic diversity, especially in old-growth forests, is a matter of national defense. Most importantly, the survival of future generations may be at stake. (Location 816)
Preliminary studies on mushrooms have revealed novel antibiotics, anticancer chemotheuropeutic agents, immunomodulators, and a slew of active constituents. (Location 819)
Despite recent medical advances, microbes, especially viruses, continue to kill millions of people, stimulating the search for new antimicrobial agents that are safe for human use. Mushrooms, which naturally produce a surprising array of antibiotics, may provide the answer. Mushrooms share a deeper evolutionary history with animals than with any other kingdom, so humans and mushrooms share risks of infection from some of the same microbes, for instance the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas fluorescens. Although mycelium has just a single cell wall protecting it from hundreds of millions of hostile microbes in every gram of soil, it manages to form networks extending, in some documented cases, thousands of acres and weighing thousands of tons. Nutrient-rich mushrooms, before sporulation, resist infection and rot. After sporulating, mushrooms rot, and I believe each mushroom species predetermines which bacterial colonies can live upon it. How do mushrooms and mycelium do this? The cell surface of mycelium “sweats” out antibiotics that are known in the field as exudates or secondary metabolites (Location 832)
Mushroom mycelia exude droplets containing enzymes and antibiotics and profuse water. The enzymes digest lignin and cellulose, petroleum products, and many molecules held together by hydrogen-carbon bonds. The antibiotics stop microbial parasites. Mushrooms resist bacterial and fungal rot until they release spores, age, and die. (Location 848)
Useful antibiotics isolated in mushrooms include calvacin from giant puffballs (Calvatia gigantea), armillaric acid from honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), campestrin from meadow mushrooms (Agaricus campestris), coprinol from inky caps (Coprinus species), corolin from turkey tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor = Coriolus versicolor), cortinellin from shiitake (Lentinula edodes), ganomycin from reishi (Ganoderma lucidum), agaricin from agarikon (Fomitopsis officinalis) and sparassol from cauliflower mushrooms (Sparassis crispa). With a diversity estimated at over 140,000 species, mushrooms are a promising resource for new antibiotics. (Location 851)
That mushrooms inhibit some bacteria but not others shows that mycelium influences the makeup of microbial populations in its immediate ecosystem. (Location 856)
That medicinal mushrooms have been ingested for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years, strongly suggests most are not toxic, and research supports them as likely candidates in our search for natural antiviral agents. (Location 862)
The most antibacterially active species were an oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus), the birch polypore (Piptoporus betulinus), and agarikon (Fomitopsis officinalis). (Location 872)
Mushroom derivatives also activate natural immune response in mammalian cells, in effect boosting an organism’s resistance to microbial infection (Location 878)
People whose immune systems are compromised by a respiratory virus can become infected by bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumonia. Mushrooms having both antiviral and antibacterial properties may prevent such opportunistic infections. (Location 883)
I hypothesize that studying the interrelationships between mushrooms and their related bacteria, viruses, and bacteriophages will reveal medically significant antibiotics in the near future. (Location 885)
Virologists are concerned about the threat of viral infection from animals. For example, the 2003 sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic may have originated from human contact with captive civet cats in rural China. Viruses and bacteria can also spread when birds, dogs, prairie dogs, bats, vermin, and other animals, including primates and humans, concentrate their populations. Of particular concern to me are animal “factory farms,” wherein thousands of chickens, hogs, cows, or other animals are aggregated, providing a prime breeding environment for microbes. Feedlots and factory farms could possibly be used by bioterrorists as launching platforms for pandemics. Hence, these sources pose a significant microbial threat to human health. (Location 887)
Virtually anywhere humans concentrate provides opportunities for contagions to spread, whether by air or by physical contact. (Location 897)
Mushrooms, especially combinations of mushrooms, offer protection from infectious diseases in at least three ways: first, directly as antimicrobial agents (antibiotics); second, by increasing your immune system’s natural defenses—what physicians call the host-mediated response (Stamets 2003b); and third, the custom construction of mycelial mats for mycofiltration can reduce the risk of infection from environmental sources such as sewage from feedlots and slaughterhouses. The key is to match the mushroom with the pathogen. (Location 899)
Scientists have also found that each species of mushroom has a signature architecture and defense against microbes. (Location 905)
Nina Gunde-Cimerman reported that a small pool of people who had ingested “15 grams of oyster mushrooms per day for 30 days reduced LDL cholesterol by up to 30 percent” (Location 919)
The cholesterol-reducing properties of oyster mushrooms, combined with their anti-HIV glycoproteins (Wang and Ng 2000), suggest that this mushroom may be one that can dually mitigate the side effects of protease inhibitor therapies while fighting AIDs. (Location 921)
As mushroom cultivation enterprises spread to developing countries in order to combat hunger, they are also well positioned to help fight HIV. (Location 925)
Mushroom farms could reinvent themselves as healing arts centers. (Location 927)
Rarely in the natural world are there organisms whose use can be pivotal in addressing the many causes of disease. Mushrooms stand out. Not only are they essential for bolstering the food web by increasing sustainability of soils and helping to integrate communities, but their mycelia and fruitbodies produce a gamut of highly potent products, medically beneficial to the environment and the organisms living within. Our mandate is to engage these fungi as allies. Mushrooms can rescue us from our current spiral toward ecological collapse and massive extinction. (Location 927)
Note: Mandate
A blight is a species-specific parasitic invasion by a fungus that kills many members of the target species in a community. (Location 933)
Nonblighting fungi, which also have medicinal or nutritional uses for humans, may be the best defense against blighting fungi. The introduction of select saprophytic or endophytic species can forestall the spread of parasitic species that cause blights. Since live trees contain much dead tissue, saprophytic and endophytic communities thrive upon them and guard against invading parasitic fungi. (Location 934)
Disease blights can inflict massive economic damage on the timber value of forests (Ferguson et al. 1998), but they may actually be beneficial, especially when viewed over the long term. (Location 939)
Fires help create meadows which, due to their low wood content, provide firebreaks and forest disease–free zones. This cycle of forest to meadow to forest may be healthier for the ecosystem in the long run because with each succession the soil biosphere is enriched as soils thicken. (Location 944)
As mycoforesters, we benefit from understanding how mushroom species compete and cooperate, giving us new tools for ecological management. (Location 955)
In principle, mushrooms like cauliflowers could defend forests against blights by Armillaria; inoculating stumps at the perimeter of an Armillaria blight could limit further spread of this destructive forest disease. (Location 960)
By prefilling the susceptible forest niche with a chosen species, a landowner can forestall or prevent invasion by blight fungi such as Armillaria. (Location 970)
Note: Prefill
By occupying the niche with selective species in advance, invasive fungi cannot take root. (Location 987)
If you’re concerned about spreading a parasitic species, then using a nonparasitic native woodlover (Hypholoma) or turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), enokis (Flammulina velutipes), oysters (Pleurotus species), or psilocybes may be more satisfactory. (Location 1005)
Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus conifericola), is an edible polypore. When slices of this specimen were grilled on a barbecue, the flavor was just like white chicken meat. (Location 1025)
Turkey tails, woodlovers, oysters, garden giants, and psilocybes are perhaps the best saprophytic sentinels in our mycological armamentarium for helping an injured forest ecosystem recover. These aggressive mushrooms love bacteria, and they grow with so much vigor that they suppress parasitic invaders such as honey mushrooms, protecting and benefiting forest growth. (Location 1029)
Since we have changed the environment so radically in such a short time, nature needs our help in order to mend. Under ordinary circumstances, nature self-prescribes fungi for its own healing. But since we have accelerated the forests’ natural destruction and renewal cycles, thereby creating massive debris fields for instance, through clear-cutting, we ought to help the forests accelerate the decomposition cycles by introducing mycelium in key areas—in essence by running mycelium. Otherwise our ecosystems will lose their equilibrium, destabilize, and crash, possibly becoming overrun by disease. (Location 1032)
Mycorestoration strategies can also help landscapes whose immune systems have been harmed by pollution. Fortunately, mushrooms like turkey tail are multibeneficial—preventing blights, fighting bacteria, and breaking down toxic chemicals like PCBs and dioxins. (Location 1039)
This principle advocates thinking of the future as much as the present—a blending of long-sighted intention and environmentally rational strategy. Like the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians to first do no harm as healers, the precautionary principle suggests that doing nothing is often better than doing something if there are substantial unknown risks inherent in an action. However, the precautionary principle advocates action in the face of impending disaster, and this is where I think mycorestoration strategies fit well. (Location 1048)
tested in the theater of evolution. I believe that it is better to search our planet’s existing genetic diversity for naturally resistant crops instead of birthing GMOs (genetically modified organisms), the Frankensteinian creatures of our era. (Location 1059)
Even the best of new ideas are often met with passionate resistance. (Location 1067)
We need to weigh the balances of potential costs versus benefits to the environment. (Location 1071)
Habitats, like people, have immune systems, which become weakened due to stress, disease, or exhaustion. Mycorestoration is the use of fungi to repair or restore the weakened immune systems of environments. (Location 1076)
As generations of mycelia cycle through a habitat, soil depth and moisture increase, enhancing the carrying capacity of the environment and the diversity of its members. On land, all life springs from soil. Soil is ecological currency. If we overspend it or deplete it, the environment goes bankrupt. In either preventing or rebuilding after an environmental catastrophe, mycologists can become environmental artists by designing landscapes for both human and natural benefit. (Location 1079)
The early introduction of primary saprophytes, which are among the first organisms to rejuvenate the food chain after a catastrophe, can determine the course of biological communities through thoughtfully matching mycelia with compatible plants, insects, and others. (Location 1082)
Mycorestoration involves using fungi to filter water (mycofiltration), to enact ecoforestry policy (mycoforestry) or co-cultivation with food crops (mycogardening, see part III), to denature toxic wastes (mycoremediation), and to control insect pests (mycopesticides). (Location 1088)
We are in constant molecular communication with fungi, but our interactions are at such a subtle level that most people fail to notice fungi’s talents. Each mushroom species has a mycelium that degrades organic matter by secreting unique mixes of extracellular enzymes and acids. Since unique suites of enzymes are generated by each species, using a plurality of species can have a synergistic effect for the more complete degeneration of toxins than could be achieved with one species alone. (Location 1091)
Using mushroom mycelia as tools for ecological restoration is a new concept borrowed from the age-old methods of nature. (Location 1098)
After forest fires, when burned habitats begin to recover, the species that appear amid the ash and cinders are mushrooms, particularly morels (Morchella), and cup fungi (Auricularia), which can appear in a matter of weeks. (Location 1099)
Morel mushrooms, for instance, are pioneers for biodiversity, first steering animate vessels of genomic complexity into an otherwise near-lifeless landscape. (Location 1108)
Integration of companion planting strategies then sets the stage for an emerging oasis in a lifeless landscape. (Location 1112)
In order to determine what method of mycorestoration should be used, a damaged habitat should first be surveyed for its species mix. The resident species are nature’s recommendations for habitat restoration. (Location 1114)
The essential idea is to grow mats of mycelium matched to the cubic size of the contamination source. (Location 1122)
By creating a sheet mulch, a shallow compost bed 6 inches to 2 feet thick, the mycofiltration properties of the mycelium and surface areas of the substrate particles will capture the microbial outflow. (Location 1123)
Oftentimes, a native fungus can correct the biological imbalance. (Location 1124)
Since mushrooms seasonally grow fruiting bodies from their mycelia, visiting the contaminated habitat during the mushroom-forming season of a particular species is the best time to survey the site for naturally occurring mycoflora. (Location 1131)
Mushrooms proliferating there already tolerate the toxin. These species are naturally selected and predominate, to the disadvantage of species that are not as well equipped. (Location 1133)
Additionally, if a toxin contaminates a habitat, mushrooms often appear that not only tolerate the toxin but also metabolize it as a nutrient or cause it to decompose. (Location 1136)
Working with Battelle Marine Science Laboratories in Sequim, Washington, a team of scientists and I identified a fungus that broke down dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), a key ingredient in the deadly neurotoxin VX (and sarin). Over the course of a few weeks, the mushroom thrived in a petri dish eating nothing but the DMMP. We essentially trained the strain to focus on DMMP as its sole nutrient source. Subsequent analysis of the culture media showed that the majority of the VX surrogate had been metabolized by the mycelium into unstable subderivatives that soon became nontoxic. This particular strain demonstrated tolerance to the VX at levels that would be toxic to other mushroom strains, showing that species vary substantially in their ability to adapt to specific toxic loads. (Location 1139)
For 20 years, I have been visiting a rhododendron garden lovingly cared for by a now elderly couple for more than 4 decades. Each year, they would distribute wood chips around the plants, building pathways and for general landscaping. The past 2 years, they’ve been no longer physically able to replenish the soil with topdressings of wood chips as they’d done previously. As a result, there has been a sudden transition in the mycoflora; Hypholomas, Psilocybes, and other species that were once prominent are now scarce. Mycological landscapes must be replenished with carrier materials and sometimes recharged with spawn to preserve the saprophytic mushroom communities. (Location 1150)
In woodlands, the constant falling of overhead debris feeds the saprophytic mushroom laying upon the forest floor. Throughout this process, soils deepen underneath. (Location 1154)
Mycorestoration is an infant science to humans, but a highly refined method used by nature for millions of years. As we open our eyes to the fungal opportunities—literally underfoot—we soon see many mushrooms in their roles as environmental healers. In my mind, mushrooms are shamanic souls, spiritually tuned into their homelands. We, as cocreators, will benefit from listening to their voices. (Location 1156)
Mycofiltration is the use of mycelium as a membrane for filtering out microorganisms, pollutants, and silt. (Location 1159)
More than a mile of threadlike mycelial cells can infuse a gram of soil. These fine filaments function as a cellular net that catches particles and, in some cases, digests them. As the substrate debris is digested, microcavities form and fill with air or water, providing buoyant, aerobic infrastructures with vast surface areas. Water runoff, rich in organic debris, percolates through the cellular mesh and is cleansed. When water is not flowing, the mycelium channels moisture from afar through its advancing fingerlike cells. (Location 1161)
First, I dumped several truckloads of wood chips into the depression. The utility company trimming tree branches away from the power lines along my county road had provided the wood chips. On top of each dump load, I spread several bags of Stropharia rugoso annulata spawn and then raked out the pile into a foot-deep layer. Springwater saturated the wood chips—a perfect environment for running mycelium. Several months later, I had a garden giant mycelial bed about 50 feet wide and 200 feet long. (Location 1189)
But just 1 year after I had installed my beds of mycelium, before I had even repaired my septic system, analysis of my outflowing water showed dramatic improvement: a hundredfold drop in coliform levels despite the fact I had more than doubled my population of farm animals. (Location 1198)
As we walked across this thick layer of wood chips, it felt like spongy duff. Our feet sank softly into the wood chips, which bounced back with each step. I explained to the inspectors that the contaminated water seeped from our livestock pasture, entered this mycofilter, and fed the myceliated wood matrix with nutrients and bacteria. As the fungus grew, the wood chips became infused with white, silky mycelium. The water that exited our wood chip bed was largely cleansed of bacteria, which had been consumed by the mycelium of the garden giant. (Location 1201)
Several factors affect the efficiency of mycofiltration: slope, flow rate, turbidity, straw shaft diameter, mushroom species, degree of mycelial colonization, and microbial populations. Given the numbers of mushroom species that have specific antibacterial properties, we already have the ability to grow hundreds of mushroom species in mycomulches to buffer or eliminate threats posed by upstream microbes. (Location 1247)
Factory farms, which crowd livestock into tight quarters for efficient feeding and slaughtering, are causing an overly focused and growing outflow of waste products that threaten the health of all. This outflow may have exceeded the amount that our habitats can absorb. And so our waste streams run into the waterways of our nation, wreaking havoc. (Location 1264)
Corporate giants responsible for this dangerous situation play political football by demonizing opponents, especially supporters of government regulations, and by pitting farmers against environmentalists. The theater of conflict features a growing cultural divide between corporate and green philosophies. (Location 1276)
Mycelium consumes granite and loosens soil creating microcavities that can retain water and, when drained, fill with air. (Location 1285)
This ability to mineralize substrates—to make minerals available by removing them from a tightly bound matrix—helps mycelia encroach into barren habitats, disintegrating rocks and setting the stage for lichens (a partnership between algae and fungi) and succeeding populations of diverse organisms. (Location 1291)
The soil can retain moisture and yet breathe through the membranous lungs of mycelium. An ecosystem’s ability to withstand massive loss of life-sustaining soils is greatly influenced by the infusion of mycelium into topsoils. (Location 1294)
While farmers have increasingly relied upon fertilizers to sustain crop yield, in the late 1980s my cousin Jim Davis, in St. John, adopted the “no-till” method of farming, drastically reducing the need for externally introduced fertilizers, despite skepticism from his neighbors. When I recently visited in October after the harvest, he showed me his wheat fields adjacent to his neighbor’s. Chopped stubble, left for nature to recycle, covered his fields, while his neighbor’s fields were marked by deep grooves from erosion. (Location 1306)
The no-till method succeeds largely due to an unseen ally—beneficial fungal mycelium. The down-turned stubble of my cousin’s farm harbored native fungi, which had both stopped erosion and replenished the soil. Since water doesn’t run off as quickly, the resident soil moisture seen in no-till fields is naturally higher due to the spongelike effects of the mycelium gobbling up the crop stubble and swelling with water. The coarse soil structure embedded with stalks from crops is perfect for mycelium to run upon. Tilling breaks the stubble into finer fragments, compacts the soil, and encourages growth of anaerobic organisms to the detriment of the oxygen-starved mycelium. Then, the carbon cycle stalls; natural nutrients are not rereleased; and importation of fertilizers is required to continue profitable farming. (Location 1310)
A 21-year study in Germany found that no-till organic farming methods were superior to conventional methods in energy use and effects on wildlife. Organic farming practices used one-half to two-thirds of the energy consumed in conventional methods. In addition, they cut pesticide use by 97 percent, resulting in healthier soils with better diversities and numbers of beneficial organisms such as fungi, earthworms, beetles, and wild plants. Although initial yields may be 10 to 20 percent less than those from conventional methods, a subsequent increase of 15 percent was seen as the soils adapted to the no-till nutrient cycles (Mader et al. 2002). In… (Location 1315)
Plowing the stubble into the soil releases 41 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than no-till practices do, impairing the soil’s carbon return cycle. In contrast, the no-till method… (Location 1322)
Not only does the mycelium unlock natural nutrients, it holds soils together while providing aeration. Without being exposed to nutrients released by mycelium, the roots of farm… (Location 1327)
Caeser-TonThat (2002) found that polysaccharides manufactured by the mycelium act as mucilaginous soil-binding agents. (Coincidentally, these same polysaccharides boost the… (Location 1332)
When the mycelium infuses soil, the internal space is framed in architecture of dense interconnecting hyphal networks. Microstructural cavities hold water and… (Location 1337)
Mycelium gives soils porosity, aeration, water retention, and ultimately a platform for diversifying life-forms. It is truly a networking organism, adding… (Location 1340)
Additionally, soils infused with actively growing mycelium benefit from thermogenesis—the natural escalation of temperature—as the mycelium decomposes organic matter… (Location 1344)
Gardeners and farmers using the no-till method can select crop-enhancing fungi that have antinematodal, pesticidal, and antiblight properties. In effect, you can customize the mycosphere for your land. As the mycelium decomposes compost or crop stubble, it projects a fine network of cells, a food web that draws in nutrients from great distances. (Location 1350)
Farmers can build soils while creating mycofiltration membranes for trapping pollutants by using thick sheet mulch inoculated with mycelium. Farms are generally well equipped to adapt fungal-filter solutions to pollution, especially where wood chips and straw are abundant. (Location 1355)
Corn farmers can first profitably grow oyster mushrooms on corncobs and then use the spent substrate, after mushroom production, as inoculum into sheet mulch. (Location 1359)
A gently sloped area below a feeding lot or manure pond, where effluent from the lot or pond continually seeps through, is an ideal site to install a mycofilter, essentially a myceliated organic drain field. (Location 1364)
Because high winds and harsh sun can dry out mycofiltration beds, cover the site with waste cardboard before adding the last layer of straw. (Location 1368)
The finish layer of straw should be 4 to 6 inches deep to provide shade, aeration, and moisture to layers below. (If natural rains do not provide sufficient moisture, sprinklers can be set up for the first few weeks until the site becomes charged with mycelia.) (Location 1369)
Mycofilters are best built in the early spring. Once established, the mycofilter will mature in a few months and remain viable for years, provided that fresh organic debris is periodically added to the top layer and covered with more straw. (Location 1372)
After some time, red worms will arrive and transform the mycelium, cardboard, and debris into rich soil. (Location 1374)
Every 2 to 3 years, the newly emerging material can be scooped up using a front loader tractor and used elsewhere as soil; the timing of this cycle will vary. (Location 1375)
Spawn will probably be your biggest expense, but once established and cared for, the mycelium can regenerate itself until the debris base has been reduced to soil. As these areas mature, they usually become covered with native grasses, which also play remediative roles. (Location 1380)
As we advance toward a better understanding of sustainability, I see these three systems—mycorestoration, permaculture, and living machines—as being essential components in a new model of habitat restoration. (Location 1387)
Without fungi, there are no forests. Mycoforestry is the use of fungi to sustain forest communities. (Location 1390)
We have a simplistic view of the interrelationships between mushrooms, the forest, and its inhabitants. For instance, in the 1940s through 1960s, timber companies commissioned the wide-scale slaughter of bears in a misguided attempt to protect the lumber industry. My neighbor was hired by a timber company to kill more than 400 black bears in Mason County, Washington. Bears love mushrooms and actively spread their spores. The conventional thinking was that when bears scratched trees in search of grubs, they created wounds that soon became infected by polypore mushrooms. Now we now know that bears and other animals actually help lowland old-growth forest ecosystems by fishing salmon and trout from streams, replenishing the stream banks with essential sea salts and nitrogen-rich nutrients. Furthermore, the spawning fish feed upon the grubs growing in fly-infested mushrooms that are washed into streams by heavy rains. The fish carcasses pulled from the streams by bears transport trace phosphorus and nitrogen, nutrients essential for tree growth. Migrating fish whose carcasses are further spread by animals are one of the few ways sea minerals and nitrogenous nutrients are carried into upland forests. Scavenging animals like bears, raccoons, birds, and insects eat the carcasses, allow the minerals to move through their digestive systems, and deposit them in locations far from the streams. (Location 1394)
Mushrooms contribute phosphorus and confer other ecological benefits to the riparian and forest ecosystems. Mushrooms become launching platforms for explosive growth of bacterial populations, many of which are critical for plant health. (Location 1405)
As the mushrooms rot, the ecosystem benefits from this cycling in which the bacteria allow phosphorus, zinc, potassium, and other essential minerals to be redeposited back into the nutritional bank. (Location 1410)
Like salmon carcasses, mushroom carcasses fertilize the ecosystem. Other organisms quickly consume the dying and rotting mushrooms. As plants grow, their falling leaves, branches, and flowers enter into the fungal cycle of decomposition. This response—a highly energized state of regrowth—is nature’s safeguard for rapid, adaptive habitat renewal. (Location 1411)
After catastrophes strike, the saprophytes lead the way toward renewal, supporting the construction of complex life-supporting soils. Unfortunately, humans often disrupt these cycles, largely because of ignorance or greed. (Location 1414)
Reforestation efforts are greatly enhanced when mycorrhizae are introduced to sprouting seeds or to the roots of young trees before or at the time of planting (Location 1420)
Selective harvesting of developing second- and third-growth forests, however, when done with the intention of preserving other secondary forest products such as mushrooms, may prove to be the best practice for sustaining profits. These principles are the cornerstone of an emergent new management strategy called ecoforestry. (Location 1438)
We now know that chanterelles often come up in pairs, and if harvesters cut only one partner, then the other mushroom, often hidden from view as a resting primordium, can grow to maturity. (Location 1445)
I wondered: with hundreds of tons of trees harvested per acre in one week from soils that have been built in the last 10,000 years, how could this loss of biomass be called renewable in our lifetime? (Location 1479)
With each generation of trees we cut, soils increasingly shallow and we further jeopardize the health of forests. The richness and depth of soil is our legacy from centuries of mycelial activity. And with each harvesting and replanting, the soil loses nutrients and gradually becomes overtaxed, no longer able to support the growth of healthy trees. (Location 1482)
Current “sustainable” logging practices strive to balance the impact of overharvesting with ecological restoration, potentially irreconcilable objectives. The bottom line is that we need to focus on carbon cycles and raise the nutritional plateau in timberlands by accelerating decomposition of wood debris and restarting plant cycles. (Location 1485)
In order to stimulate decomposition and trigger habitat recovery, we can selectively introduce keystone mushroom species such as saprophytic fungi, the first species to feed on dead wood. (Location 1492)
Making wood debris fields more fungus friendly speeds up decomposition and helps the decomposition cycles become more balanced. (Location 1497)
In forestlands, mycelium follows trails of fallen wood. Sticks and branches making ground contact are soon consumed by mycelium from existing fungal communities. Mycelia literally reach up from the ground into the newly available wood. (Location 1501)
I recommend creating a matrix by chipping wood into variably sized fragments in order to let mycelium quickly grab and invade the wood. (Location 1504)
The fungal recycling of wood chips lessens reliance on fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. So leaving the chips in the woods helps recovering forest soils just like leaving stubble on farmed land helps agricultural soil. (Location 1506)
However, if the wood is reduced to too fine a dust and piled too deeply, it suffocates aerobic fungi, including beneficial saprophytes, and anaerobic organisms flourish. From my experiences, I have learned that chips should be no smaller than ⅛ inch and piled no more than a foot deep. (Location 1508)
Mycoforestry is a newly emerging science, an offshoot of ecoforestry practices with an emphasis on the role of beneficial fungi. As with any new scientific path, guidelines help steer the course of research and the development of new implementation strategies. These are the guiding principles I foresee: Use native species of fungi in the habitats needing restoration. Amplify saprophytic fungi based on available wood substrates. Select species known to help plant communities. Select mushroom species that attract insects whose larvae are food for fish and birds. Select fungal species according to their interactions with bacteria and plants. Choose species that compete with disease rot fungi (such as Armillaria species and Heterobasidion annosum) by using mycorestorative saprophytes like Hypholoma, Psilocybe, Trametes, Ganoderma, Sparassis, and allies. Choose species of known medicinal or culinary value if economically valuable mushrooms help tilt the balance in favor of preservation. Promote ground contact with fallen trees so they can reenter the soil food chain. Leave snags to sustain bird and insect populations. Use spored oils in chain saws, chippers, and cutting tools so that wood debris is immediately put into contact with fungal spores, speeding up decomposition. Retain wood debris on-site, and place debris around newly planted trees, along roads, or wherever erosion control is needed. Only burn wood debris as a last-ditch measure for disease control. Use mycorrhizal spore inoculum when replanting forestlands. (Seedlings cultivated in pasteurized or constructed soils on tree nurseries typically lack mycorrhizae.) (Location 1514)
By using spored oils in chainsaws and chipping equipment, the decomposition process and therefore habitat recovery can be jump-started immediately upon cutting. Furthermore, by choosing an aggressive saprophytic mushroom species such as oysters, turkey tails, or woodlovers, parasitic fungi are confronted in a form of mycelial combat, thus lessening their resurgence. (Location 1530)
By far the preferred mycorrhizae for trees are Rhizopogons, Pisolithus, and Glomus species. These inedible mushrooms, which resemble little puffballs, mycorrhize with about 80 percent of all trees in temperate climates. In fact, these native puffball-like mushrooms are so ubiquitous that they compete with the truffles, chanterelles, or matsutake inoculated by wishful growers. Many believe the best way to colonize the root zone of a tree is to grow its roots first in pasteurized soil, which is then inoculated with mycorrhizal mushroom spores. (Location 1551)
Mushrooms and trees have love affairs. (Location 1562)
The potential benefits from the collars of wood chips include a regional cooling of the soil, enhanced moisture retention, and the slow streaming of nutrients to the root zones as saprophytic fungi decompose the wood chips. (Location 1583)
In my prior experiences, I’ve observed foot-deep beds of wood chips decompose into 1 to 2 inches of rich soil in 2 to 3 years when inoculated with mycelium, or in 4 to 5 years from natural mycoflora. Mushroom mycelium is the grand demolecularizer of plant fibers (lignin and cellulose), creating soil as an end consequence. (Location 1585)
I see wood chips as valuable ecological currency that should be reinvested into forest’s ecobank to enhance sustainability. (Location 1588)
As a matter of common sense, I do not believe you can harvest 3 generations of trees from the same land within 100 years, burn the brush each time, and not thin the soils. Such practices are not sustainable. This is a false premise espoused by the forestry and logging interests. (Location 1617)
We have made the environment more susceptible to fires as water is diverted for agricultural and urban use as well as with our continual encroachment onto forestlands, not to mention our practice of purposefully setting fires. Rotating tree crops every 40 years thins the soil, and replanting clear-cuts leads to dense forests of homogenous age packing an enormous fuel load from dead aerial side branches (see figure 86). On the other hand, old-growth forests tend to have few side branches near the forest floor, where moist nurse logs give rise to succeeding generations. (Location 1637)
Moist wood does not easily burn. (Location 1648)
Since carbon dioxide is heavier than air and permeates soils, plants benefit from its close proximity. Plant cells absorb carbon dioxide and use it as raw material for creating cellulose, lignin, carbohydrates, proteins, sterols, and outgas oxygen. (Location 1655)
Decomposition by fungi buffers carbon dioxide emission and cycles much of the gas back into the flourishing ecosystem. (Location 1658)
As a mycoforester, I recommend chipping excess wood in replanted forests and leaving the chips on the forest floor. If mycoforesters spread mulch around young trees, along trails, or in mycofiltration buffer zones near watersheds, they can fortify the forest with beneficial fungi. (Location 1663)
Where wood chips touch the ground, fungi easily grow into them and transport moisture with their threadlike mycelium. The myceliated wood chips then become like a sponge, retaining water (which is needed by neighboring plants) and lessening fire danger. (Location 1664)
Leaving wood chips on the forest floor provides many benefits, including these: delayed release of nutrients—to build soils supporting mycofiltration membranes that reduce erosion and siltation providing cavity habitats for diverse populations of bacteria, fungi, plants, insects, and animals moisture retention protection against forest fires substrates for decommissioned logging roads (see below) (Location 1666)
The key component of mycofiltration is the purposeful introduction of fungi—saprophytic and mycorrhizal—into the wood chip buffers. (Location 1702)
Broadcasting spores on chipped wood also accelerates decomposition throughout the process.) (Location 1705)
We arranged for the delivery of 3 loads of waste wood—a crude mixture of bark, wood chips, and fir needles. North Mason Fiber, a local supplier to the pulp paper industry, donated these loads, and 7 Fungi Perfecti employees donated their time to spread the wood chip matrix 6 inches deep over the length of the road. Then we tossed handfuls of spawn of the native oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus on top. After the chips were distributed, we spread 6 bales of wheat straw over the top to help hold in moisture for the spawn’s benefit. (Location 1740)
On top of the straw, we spread 20 pounds of Regreen, a nonseeding wheat approved for erosion control, using a broadcast seeder stocked with 1 pound of Mycogrow, a mycorrhizal inoculum. (I recommend using native grasses over commercial varieties, but the simple fact is that native grass seed is difficult and expensive to acquire.) We completed the work in mid-April, when rainfall was intermittently heavy. A week later we returned to the site and found the habitat in its first stages of restoration, with seeds sprouting. (Location 1749)
As the mycelium infiltrates the wood chips, more moisture is retained. The new mushrooms also attract native insects and the rotting mushrooms become breeding grounds for fly larvae and grubs, subsequently attracting animals from lizards to birds. (Location 1757)
As the wheat grass climaxes and dies and the wood chips decompose, a rich soil is created, further nurturing recovering native species. For every 12 inches of wood chips, we estimate that 1 to 2 inches of soil are created after 4 years of decomposition by oyster mushrooms. (Location 1763)
Wood chips are the ecological currency that we should bank for preventing erosion. (Location 1770)
As a species, humans are adept at inventing toxins yet equally inept at eliminating them from our environment. (Location 1771)
Mycoremediation is the use of fungi to degrade or remove toxins from the environment. Fungi are adept as molecular disassemblers, breaking down many recalcitrant, long-chained toxins into simpler, less toxic chemicals. Mycoremediation also holds promise for removing heavy metals from the land by channeling them to the fruitbodies for removal. Mycoremediation practices involve mixing mycelium into contaminated soil, placing mycelial mats over toxic sites, or a combination of these techniques, in one-time or successive treatments. (Location 1779)
Since many of the bonds that hold plant material together are similar to the bonds found in petroleum products, including diesel, oil, and many herbicides and pesticides, mycelial enzymes are well suited for decomposing a wide spectrum of durable toxic chemicals. Because the mycelium breaks the hydrogen-carbon bonds, the primary nonsolid by-products are liberated in the form of water and carbon dioxide. More than 50 percent of the organic mass cleaves off as carbon dioxide and 10 to 20 percent as water; this is why compost piles dramatically shrink and ooze leachate as they mature. (Location 1815)
Life springs from mycelium. Fungi control the flow of nutrients, and as a consequence they are the primary governors of ecological equilibrium. As ecosystems change, fungi adapt to steer the course of nutrient cycles. The strength and health of any ecosystem is a direct measure of its diverse fungal populations and their interplay with plants, insects, bacteria, and other organisms. (Location 1821)
When working with fungi on toxic waste sites, it soon becomes clear that many other organisms are being affected. The introduction of a single fungus, for instance oyster mycelium, into a nearly lifeless landscape triggers a cascade of activity by other organisms. A synergy between at least 4 kingdoms—fungus, plant, bacterium, and animal—denatures toxins into derivatives useful to myriad species and fatal to few. (Location 1825)
Ultimately, nature fosters complex partnerships of interdependence, with fungi blazing the path to ecological recovery. (Location 1835)
One multi-kingdom method for decontaminating land is to use a wood chipper or chip blower to disperse spawn while making a layer of sheet mulch. Higher inoculation rates usually result in faster colonization. A preferred method is to disperse sawdust spawn in the stream of flowing chips equivalent to about one-fourth of the total mass of wood chips. (Location 1836)
The goal is to provide a layer of mulch where aerobic mycelia are not suffocated and displaced by anaerobic competitors. Cover the bed with cardboard, and then add a loose layer of straw. (For specifics on this method, see chapter 12.) After the residual levels decline to tolerable limits—which may take several reapplications—trees and plants infused with mycorrhizae can be planted. To maintain the site, you may need to reintroduce follow-up populations of mediating mycelia. Once the mushroom mycelium begins to unlock the nutrition from the wood chips, other organisms enter the landscape. Once these predecessor organisms are engaged, nature will steer the habitat on the path toward self-healing. (Location 1840)
What was surprising was that the overall effect was enhanced when mycelium was introduced to a microbially competitive environment of raw wood chips and soil. (Location 1861)
Throughout nature, mycelia act as an active hydrological transport system. The mycelia increase the moisture retention ability of the habitats they colonize through secretions of water and sugars from the advancing, fingerlike hyphal tips. (Location 1888)
We placed the spawn in layers, sandwiching the soil in between, since my earlier studies had shown that mycelial colonization speeds up when the mycelium is concentrated in a layer rather than dispersed throughout a pile. (Location 1901)
Known as primary decomposers to most, we saw oyster mushrooms are a vanguard species for habitat restoration. (Location 1924)
With mycoremediation, brownfields can be reborn as greenfields, turning valueless or even liability-laden wastelands into valuable real estate. (Location 1936)
Mammals at the top of the food chain suffer by ingesting toxins consumed by organisms lower on the food chain. Mycelia can destroy these toxins in the soil before they enter our food supply. (Location 1956)
The mycoremediation method is elegantly simple: overlay straw or wood chips infused with the right mycelium to create a living membrane of enzymes that rain down on the toxins in the topsoil. (Location 1971)
If these “magic” mushroom species proved effective for breaking down VX, would we choose not to use them since they are controlled substances and illegal in many countries? Nature responds to catastrophes with apolitical measures. We often do not. (Location 2033)
Wood’s main structural fiber, lignin, is one of the most recalcitrant molecules manufactured by nature. It can resist decomposition because its long-chained carbon-hydrogen design rebuffs most enzymes. However, mycelial enzymes are uniquely equipped to degrade lignin into shorter-chained molecules. (Location 2071)
A major factor in breaking down plant fibers or toxins using mycelium is the influence of hungry microbes that prefer certain types of nutrients. Knowing how to appease or redirect their appetite to a menu specific to your needs is part of the art of mycoremediation and mycofiltration. Nature loves communities. When one species is suddenly introduced, the population dynamics shift in response. Introduced mycelium can become a launching platform for bacteria. (Location 2079)
Mycelium fosters microbial communities. Upon its cellular architecture bacteria ride, held in abeyance by the selective influences of the mycelium’s anti-biotics. As the mycelium declines in vigor, resident and competing bacterial populations bloom and use the mycelium and the fruiting body as staging platforms for explosive growth. (Location 2086)
After fungi break down large molecules, bacteria feast on these newly available nutrients. (Location 2092)
Fungi and bacteria are the biological pumps of the carbon-nitrogen cycle. (Location 2093)
Mushrooms have a vested interest in the developing plant communities that will fuel their future life cycles with the debris they generate. (Location 2104)
In a cubic foot of spawn, there can be than 14,000 miles of fine, threadlike mycelia. A 1-inch-long rhizomorph has the tensile strength of more than 30,000 times its mass (Location 2113)
Each fragment of mycelium is a mycelial island, which as it grows seeks to join with other islands of itself, to eventually form a contiguous mycelial mat. Once you amass and distribute spawn, you not only have “mycelial mileage,” meaning the spawn has enormous potential for further growth, but you enlist a powerful ally for transforming habitats. (Location 2115)
Currently, oyster mushroom farmers have little or no market for their spent compost once it is has flushed mushrooms. They would probably be eager to find someone to take this material off their hands. Spent compost offers a fortuitous opportunity to dramatically heal sick landscapes. The sheer tonnage of enzyme reserves within this myceliated substrate is staggering. Not using this mycomass of by-products is to waste this resource. (Location 2133)
If a mushroom farm is not nearby, commercial spawn can be imported and used to make “bunker spawn” (burlap sacks filled with wood chips and mycelium), which is incubated outside and naturalizes to the outdoor climate during grow-out. If spawn is too expensive, a simple way to amass mycelium is to take stem butts (the bottom of the harvested mushroom stem) and expand them into bunker spawn (see chapter 9). Using a combination of spores and stems butts harvested during the fruiting season and inoculated into new habitats can be an effective method for expanding mycelium year to year. (Location 2140)
If you want to clone mushrooms and generate your own pure culture spawn, see Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms (Stamets 2000a). (Location 2149)
I recommend planting spawn in early spring unless winter temperatures stay above freezing, in which case fall inoculations can give you a head start. (Location 2150)
Mushroom-forming fungi have a decided advantage over those that don’t form mushrooms, since the heavy mass of compacted hyphae composing the mushroom’s body makes it easy to collect the bioconcentrated toxins in solid form. In effect, the toxins move into a portable cellular vessel: a mushroom that, when removed, could reduce ambient levels of the toxins on the site. (Location 2179)
I cannot help but wonder if the mushrooms that concentrate toxins are purposefully volunteering their services, absorbing heavy metals in order to protect other organisms from harm, in essence emerging to be picked and help the injured environment repair itself. Perhaps nature is more intelligent than we give her credit for. (Location 2213)
Mushrooms concentrate many metals. Just as biologists do not know why Psilocybe mushrooms manufacture hallucinogenic phosphorus-based compounds, we do not know why other species concentrate heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, cesium, (Location 2218)
The longer the mycelium is in direct contact with the soil containing heavy metals, the greater the absorption into the mycelia. (Location 2236)
Saprophytic mushrooms may be more useful for cleaning up recently deposited or surface contaminants, while mycorrhizal species offer a transport system from areas deeper underground. Once the mycelium up-channels heavy metals into the mushrooms, they can be picked and transported out of the area. If the heavy metal–laden mushrooms are not removed, then bacteria and other fungi will cause them to decompose and return to the soil. (Location 2240)
The fact that mushrooms selectively concentrate heavy metals may be good news for those seeking organic methods for restoring habitats in situ. (Location 2245)
I advocate avoiding all mushrooms found along roadsides, where exhaust fumes and asphalt supply arsenic to fungi. (Location 2264)
Of all the mushrooms mentioned in this book, Agaricus stands out as the genus with the most species concentrating acutely toxic cadmium. Cadmium hyperaccumulation has been a concern for the button mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) industry for many years. The maximum acceptable level for cadmium intake, according to the ATSDR, is 2 parts per billion (ppb) per kg of your body weight per day. Cadmium intakes as low as 1 mcg per day can harm the neurological system and the immune system and could cause cancer. Agaricus mushrooms grown in cadmium-laden lands, especially regions near steel smelters, could be harmful. (Location 2272)
I don’t know, but I am suspicious when I find shaggy manes near industrial sites and avoid eating them. (Location 2323)
Selenium bonds with mercury in an unimolecular, biologically inactive form, making it nearly non-toxic. However, if too much selenium bonds with mercury, which could mean there is too much mercury in your body, then the body’s selenium levels drop, affecting the immune system. (Location 2336)
The Journal of the American Medical Association published a placebo-controlled clinical study of selenium and reported that 200 mcg of selenium per day reduced lung, colorectal, and, most dramatically, prostate cancer (Location 2338)
Few foods are rich in selenium. Fish, Brazil nuts, meat, and mushrooms are notable sources. (Location 2343)
Some mushrooms are almost too good at concentrating selenium. The cultivated button mushroom’s ability to concentrate this element initially drew interest in it as a health food. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University found a linear relationship between selenium uptake by mushrooms and selenium supplemented into composts (Spolar et al. 1998). The uptake is so efficient that some button mushrooms, if eaten daily, would cause the consumer to exceed the recommended daily intake and overdose. (Location 2348)
When mushrooms over-concentrate metals, they become toxic to eat, but furnish a new opportunity. By removing these mushrooms we reduce metals in the immediate environment. (Location 2369)
Mycoremediation is the destruction of life-limiting toxins that enables other ecological restoration strategies. (Location 2404)
The need for alternative, nontoxic pesticides is critical, since the medical and ecological impact of toxic pesticides poses a cascading health hazard and a global threat to our biosphere. (Location 2475)
Biopesticides, especially select fungi, do not pose a persistent threat to the environment after use, in contrast to many conventional chemical treatments that cause long-term damage. (Location 2480)
With some species of Metarhizium, Beauveria, Hirsutella, and Paecilomyces, a tiny club-shaped mushroom classified in the genus Cordyceps can sprout from the dead insect carcass (see figures 114 and 115). This is an example of fungal dimorphism: this organism can express itself in either of 2 forms, as a mold or as a mushroom. (Location 2499)
With social insects—those that have a queen, such as ants and termites—the partitioning of fungi-infected members is critical for the nest’s survival. The populations of some termite and ant nests number into the millions. In order to protect these large nests, the insect communities set up a sentry system guarding the queen and her brood. Some entomologists have termed these nests “factory fortresses,” with soldiers throughout the nest on high alert to prevent entry from enemies, including infected members. If an infected individual is recognized, it is promptly killed and placed in a graveyard away from the nest. In other words, the insects know that the plague is nearby when they sense or smell it, and they immediately mobilize to prevent infection of their colony. (Location 2518)
Carpenter ants are nature’s way of recycling wood. Carpenter ants and termites dance with fungi in debris fields—and wooden buildings. (Location 2528)
We seek balance, not extinction. (Location 2635)
Key to growing mushrooms, whether for deploying mycorestoration strategies or eating or using them medicinally, is to first grow mycelia—the (Location 2648)
As cultivators, it is our job to help mycelia navigate through the highly competitive microbial universe, one habitat at a time, always keeping hungry parasites at bay. (Location 2651)
Most important of the techniques to come is how to use “natural spawn,” that is, how to transplant and nurture wild spawn for mycorestoration projects. (Location 2654)
In the end, taking the time to create natural spawn will prevent a lot of very time-consuming troubleshooting that goes hand in hand with starting from pure culture spawn. (Location 2659)
Unless the mycelium is recharged with basic nutrients, it will move on as it transforms debris fields into soil. (Location 2668)
Mycelium is, in essence, a digestive cellular membrane, a fusion between a stomach and a brain, a nutritional and informational sharing network. It is an archetype of matter and life: our universe is based upon these networking structures. Your job is to become embedded into the mind-set of this matrix and use its connections for running with mycelium. (Location 2669)
I have learned to make the wisest choices by listening to the mycelium. (Location 2689)
It is now known that it’s possible to grow many mushrooms using spore slurries from elder mushrooms. (Location 2698)
Mushroom spore casts can initiate satellite colonies of mycelium, forming from a few feet to several hundred feet from their parental sources. When spores are dispersed, density of spores decreases exponentially—as an inverse square of the distance—from the parent mushroom. Since, in most cases, the mycelia from 2 compatible spores must merge before fertile mycelium can be created (see chapter 2), it becomes increasingly unlikely that 2 spores will join the further apart they land. (Location 2724)
Whenever you handle mushrooms, their spores stick to you. The wind blowing the spore dust off our bodies adds to spore mobility. I guesstimate that in the course of a day the average human accumulates between 10 and 100 million fungal spores on his or her body and clothes. (Location 2752)
We are all Johnny Appleseeds, or rather Johnny Mushroom spores, in the service of the fungal kingdom. Once you are aware of how spores work, you can use this knowledge to start your own mushroom gardens. (Location 2757)
The air is a sea filled with invisible spores of microorganisms. (Location 2759)
Success is a numbers game: you need to find a strategy that favors your chosen mushrooms and discourages competitors. (Location 2765)
When you place a mushroom onto paper, falling spores collect in delicate patterns, graceful and beautiful. The collection of these invisible spores amasses as a visible dust. You never know how a print will look until you remove the mushroom that has cast its spore dust. (Location 2768)
Although genera vary so much in classic spore color, every spore print is mandala-like (Location 2777)
As art from nature, spore prints unveil one of the hidden mysteries of the mushroom life cycle. And making spore prints is not only fun—it is essential for identification. (Location 2778)
Go mushroom hunting. Before going on a foray, learn about the species you want to grow by enrolling in a class or picking up a field guide. Being a West Coast mycophile, my two favorite field guides are David Arora’s All That the Rain Promises and More (1991) and Mushrooms Demystified (1986). On your foray, choose a mushroom specimen, preferably one that is approaching maturity. (Location 2788)
Once mushrooms mature to a flattened state, spore production usually decreases, and in some cases the edges will upturn at full maturity. (Location 2792)
If the gill color is not white, use a white sheet of paper. Typing or photocopy paper works well. If the gill color is white, as is the case with shiitake or oyster mushrooms, use a colored piece of paper. (Location 2795)
Sever the cap from the stem, and place the cap, gills or pores down, on the piece of paper. Caps of larger mushrooms do not need to be covered. Smaller mushrooms may dry out, hindering spore release, so it is best to cover with a cup or bowl to lessen the rate of evaporation. (Location 2797)
Allow the sporulating mushroom to sit for at least 12 hours. When you carefully lift up the cap, you will discover the spore pattern that has collected on the paper. The spores fall in a pattern mirroring that of the gills or pores and, in the case of gilled mushrooms, pile up in the form of ridges. You can use these for cultivation or as decorative art. If you wish to keep your spore prints as artwork, spray them with the same aerosol fixative that artists use to protect chalk drawings. After being sprayed, these fun-to-make nature portraits are unusable for cultivation and are not allergenic. (Location 2799)
If you want to grow mushrooms from the spores on the print, then place the dried print in a plastic resealable bag until needed. (Location 2806)
Some mushrooms cannot easily spore print on paper. In particular, morels and lion’s manes are architecturally different from classic button-style mushrooms and can broadcast spores by expelling them in all directions. Collect spores from these mushrooms by enclosing them in a paper, wax paper, or plastic bag. (Location 2826)
I prefer paper sacks, especially for morels. (The sacks can be sandwiched into cardboard to create cardboard spawn that can then be placed outdoors.) (Location 2831)
Arora (1986) estimated that a large artist conk (Ganoderma applanatum) can produce 5 trillion spores annually (see figure 20)! With spores averaging 8 microns in length, this means that a string of these spores would be 40 trillion microns, or 40,000 kilometers, or approximately 24,854 miles—just about enough to encircle the Earth. This abundance of sporulation of just one species, when placed in the context of total fungal biodiversity, shows how infused our biome is with fungal DNA. (Location 2893)
Spores may not germinate for any number of reasons. One problem with spore prints is that when the protein-rich spores concentrate, they become a fertile breeding ground for bacteria. Spores need to be diluted in order to tip the balance in favor of fungal growth and against competitors. (Location 2908)
Most mushroom spores love to grow on the moist surfaces of dead plants, especially when they’re scattered like checkers on a checkerboard. Spores germinate quickly in water. (Location 2911)
The art of cultivation is to give the mushroom spores a head start, in advance of competition, to initiate the ever-increasing spiral of germination. (Location 2914)
In most instances, fresh spores of saprophytic mushrooms contain enough nutrition to germinate in water without added nutrients. However, as they get older, age becomes a barrier to germination. Soaking spores in a sugar and salt broth often causes them to germinate more quickly than competitor spores. (Location 2918)
(Many mushrooms continue to grow after you pick them, as their flesh is transformed into a spore-generating material in a last heroic effort to produce offspring.) (Location 2933)
Spores can be immersed in canola, corn, or safflower oil, which can be used as a lubricant for chain saws or other cutting equipment. As trees, brush, or plants are cut, the spore-infused oil distributes spores to the newly cut surfaces, an efficient method of transfer. (Location 2958)
The sweet wood-based glues used in cardboard provide a boost to mycelial growth. (Location 2977)
Spores germinate into mycelium. When this mycelium is used to inoculate more material, it is called spawn. (Location 3024)
Practically any fallen tree or piece of wood that has been lying on the ground for a few months will host mycelium on its underside. The mycelium pulps the wood over time, slowly digesting its primary components, lignin and cellulose. (Location 3041)
Identifying mycelium without its mushroom is difficult, since it has few characteristics to help you identify it. Some examples that are easily identifiable are the blewit (Lepista nuda) and the garden giant (Stropharia rugoso annulata). The blewit’s brilliant purplish mycelium grows underneath some of my fir trees. The garden giant’s mycelium has a ropy quality and a rich and uniquely sweet fragrance, which it also emits when grown in the laboratory. (Location 3044)
Mushroom scents, even in the absence of mushrooms, inform us that the mycelium is alive and thriving. (Location 3052)
The simplest way of transplanting mycelium is to scoop it up and move it to a new location. The transplanted mycelium, virgin spawn, will be used to make a mycelial footprint at another location. (Location 3055)
In a few years, the amount of mycomass that can be generated is impressive: one 4 by 4-foot patch can be expanded to over 128,000 square feet, over 3 acres, in 3 years. But, to be successful, you must learn how to run with mycelium. (Location 3062)
When providing materials for the mycelium to consume, the obvious choices are to try to replicate the native ecosystem from which it grew, or to find new materials for the mycelium to sample. (Location 3066)
When selecting natural spawn from a wild mushroom patch, choose mycelium that tenaciously grips the wood chips. One test for vigor of the mycelium is whether or not the rhizomorphs can suspend the chips in the air. (Location 3070)
Healthy mycelium grips the wood chips so firmly that some strength is required in order to tear them apart. (Location 3086)
Once you find mycelium, you need to give it a new, friendly environment. Mycelium needs moisture, air, and darkness. (Location 3087)
A loosely folded cardboard box or paper sack is a fungus-friendly container. Once mycelium is placed into a cardboard box or paper sack, it should be exposed immediately to the outdoors after being transported to your home, unless temperatures are below freezing or too hot. (Location 3088)
One method I favor for expanding naturalized mycelium is to use cardboard. The idea for this method came to me when I observed an elderly couple who were suppressing weed growth in their rhododendron garden by placing cardboard over the mulch around their rhododendrons. Seeing my wife use cardboard in the garden for a similar purpose reinforced the idea. Although the husband and wife team were seeking to minimize weed growth without the use of chemicals, they unexpectedly grew mushrooms. Covering wood chips and mulch with cardboard promoted mushroom growth. (Location 3100)
Tear the cardboard panels so that the corrugations are exposed. Wet the cardboard until it is saturated. Take the torn panels and place them with the exposed-corrugation side in contact with the mycelium recently implanted. You can encourage mycelium to grow upward through the wood chips or mulch and surface just beneath the cardboard. If the mycelium already resides just below the surface, the patch is maturing: scrape away the top layer of wood chips or mulch to expose the mycelium to the cardboard. The sooner the terrestrial mycelium surfaces and makes contact with the wet cardboard, the better. (For this method, I prefer aerial mycelium, with uplifting fans of growth.) If the air is dry, first saturate the bed of mycelium with water before you cover with it with moist corrugated cardboard. Covering the cardboard with a loose layer of straw reduces evaporation and provides shade. Incubate for several months, periodically watering and checking to see if the mycelium has attached to the cardboard. Once the mycelium covers 25 to 50 percent of the cardboard, it can be transferred. If it is overincubated, the mycelium will die back. For this reason, it is best to move the mycelium at the crest of its growth—what I call “surfing the mycelial wave.” (Location 3107)
If living mycelium touches dry wood, the wood will suck the moisture from the mycelium, causing cells walls to collapse and harming them. If you place the sensitive mycelium onto a wet surface, it can grab onto the surface without having to struggle to manage moisture within its own cells. (Location 3127)
This method may revolutionize the outdoor cultivation of many mushrooms. Perhaps you collected mushrooms while on a walk, or you have mushrooms fruiting. This is the time to make use of one of nature’s most fortuitous fungal opportunities. Natural spawn can be generated from the basal rhizomorphs radiating around the stem’s connection to the nurturing mycelium. If you cut the base away from the stem, carefully protecting its rhizomorphs, the tissue stays alive. A few stem butts can inoculate a bed of wood chips or wooden furniture dowels (“plugs”) or be sandwiched into corrugated cardboard. For years thereafter, you can create dozens of satellite colonies from the stem butts of mushrooms from your mother patches, and each colony can be continuously expanded into constellations of colonies. (Location 3156)
The stem butt acts as nutrient source for the rhizomorphs as they grow rapidly onto new materials. (Location 3170)
MAKING CARDBOARD SPAWN FROM STEM BUTTS To use stem butts to make cardboard spawn: Gather fresh mushrooms of varieties known to have stem butt regrowing capacity (read here). Using a knife or scissors, clip off the base of the stem just above where it narrows, keeping the rootlike rhizomorphs intact and attached to the stem. Soak cardboard in water until it is fully saturated. Tear off sections to expose corrugations. Place 1 stem butt on the cardboard roughly every 16 square inches, and sandwich them between panels of corrugation. Soak the stem butts and cardboard in water and place in a cardboard box, trunk, old bathtub, sink, or trough, or simply on the ground, and cover with a shallow layer of wood chips. Keep in the shade, with the incubating container on the ground to limit temperature fluctuation. Incubate for 4 to 8 months before transplanting. (Location 3173)
Your imagination is the only limit. However, the mycelium must be moved (transplanted) or it will die. Hence, our motto with mycelium: “move it or lose it.” (Location 3183)
Rhizomorphs attached to the stem butt can regrow—if handled carefully. Be especially careful that they don’t dry out before use. (Location 3197)
Placing cut stem butts, with rhizomorphs attached, into moistened, folded, or sandwiched corrugated cardboard. This folded cardboard, once inoculated, is placed into a cardboard box or plastic tub with a loose lid and drainage holes, and incubated outdoors in the shade and on the ground. (Location 3201)
After a month, the mycelial colonies from each portion of the cut stem butts merge to form a contiguous colony. This cardboard can now be used as spawn for inoculating more wood chips by placing it mycelial face down onto wood chips or putting several inches of wood chips on top of it to make a mycelial footprint. (Location 3205)
This method works so well that I call it “the 1-dowel revolution.” How much dowel spawn could you make from a single mycelium-covered dowel? Using my experience as a basis, I calculate that the first year you can make 10,000 mycelium-covered dowels from a single stem butt. The second year the mycelium on each dowel could also be multiplied 1,000 to 10,000 times, for a total of 10 to 100 million dowels, weighing about 2,000 to 20,000 pounds, after just 2 years. If you use the dowels to inoculate burlap bags filled with wood chips, by the end of the third year you could have generated enormous mycomass given an inoculation rate of 10 to 100 myceliated dowels for each bag. The number of burlap bags that could be inoculated is mind-boggling, from 100,000 to 1,000,000. When a burlap bag is laid upon the ground, it covers 2 to 3 square feet, meaning that enough mycelium can be generated to cover 200,000 to 3,000,000 square feet, equivalent to 4.5 to 69 acres of coverage. Culling bags that fail to show good growth may be necessary. Even if only 25 percent of the burlap bags fully colonize, a reasonable expectation, this low-tech method can be a dramatic tool for restoring polluted environments, and for building life-sustaining soils. If grasses or trees are added into the mix, each bag becomes a pedestal of ecological rebirth. (Location 3244)
Whether the mushrooms are saprophytic or mycorrhizal, I encourage you to take the stem butts of mushrooms collected on forays and cast them about your property to create satellite mycological communities. (Location 3268)
Using burlap bag spawn, homeowners can create mycological landscapes in their backyards. On a larger scale, this type of spawn can help repair damage to ecosystems and create buffers between sensitive ecosystems and toxic environments. (Location 3281)
In a sense, bunker spawn serves a similar function: preventing shallow sheet flows of contaminant-laden sediments and controlling erosion. Vertical walls or horizontal plateaus of myceliated burlap sacks or bunker spawn can be built according to the needed ecological applications and other design criteria. (Location 3299)
But regardless of the materials you use, the mycelia that result have one thing in common: a preference for fabrics. The architecture of fabric, specifically that of burlap bags, is well suited to rapid colonization by mycelium. (Location 3312)
Pure culture spawn, if not immediately parasitized, slowly adapts its immune system to newly contacted microbial populations, eventually naturalizing to the resident microflora and then rebounding with spurts of growth. (Location 3353)
The success of using pure culture spawn to inoculate raw wood or straw is limited because of competition from the millions of spores already resident in that material. (Location 3357)
To give pure culture spawn a chance to devise defensive strategies in advance, a few days before use, introduce a small sample (a few grams, for example) of the raw substrate to the spawn (5 pounds, for example). In effect, you are purposefully contaminating the pure culture spawn with a sample of the microbially rich habitat in which it is destined to reside. (Location 3359)
It’s always best to run with mycelium when its pace is the briskest, projecting it at its optimum rate of growth. (Location 3396)
FIGURE 168 A habitat is reborn. David Sumerlin stands in a planted grove of poplars rapidly growing from a forest floor built of burlap sacks filled with wood chips permeated by Psilocybe cyanescens mycelium. Bags of wood chips were placed on clay-mineral earth around transplanted trees. Leaf and twig fall fuels the carbon cycle: as trees grow, mycelium thrives, soils thicken, and mushrooms form. From what was once barren soil, a whole (Location 3398)
The benefits of inoculating wood chips are that you can be selective about the fungi you grow, and that colonization is far faster than it is in the wild. Uninoculated fresh wood chips are vulnerable to “spore fall”—wild spores raining down from the air and coming up from the ground. Spore fall typically produces island colonies of several competing species, usually 2 years after wood chips have been manufactured. Essentially, the window of opportunity for getting a species you desire to grow on recently chopped, undiseased wood chips usually closes in 2 years, when native fungi surge and dominate. In contrast, inoculated wood chips colonize with mycelium in 6 to 12 months, and the mycelium, secreting antibiotics and free radical enzymes, destroys many airborne and embedded spores of competing fungi. (Location 3409)
Mixing fine and coarse materials together often creates a friendly matrix for the mycelium, since it loves complex mixtures with fractal-like microstructures. (Location 3471)
Despite the fact that only a few fungi are native to straw, many mushrooms can be grown on cereal straws due to the mushrooms’ powerful enzymes that break down plant fibers. (Location 3491)
Incubating at lower temperatures slows the principal competitors and gives the mycelium an advantage. The first step on the path to success is choosing the right strain of a cold-loving mushroom such as an oyster, enoki (Flammulina populicola or Flammulina velutipes), or woodlover (Hypholoma species) to place into untreated straw. Use the most vigorous mycelium possible. Simply broadcast the mycelium onto wet straw, inoculating at a 10 to 30 percent rate, meaning the mass of the spawn is 10 to 30 percent the total mass of the receiving substrate. Mix thoroughly and then place this mixture into your incubation vessel: a plastic bag, a box, a tray, an old bathtub—whatever you think is suitable. Laying parallel layers of spawn can help speed up colonization in some circumstances. Incubate outdoors. While cold incubating mycelium on straw, cover with a shade cloth, cardboard, or plastic (if the straw is placed in a shady spot). Incubate until fully colonized, when the brown straw has become white with mycelium. Once colonized, the mycelial straw is brought to a suitable temperature for fruiting. (Location 3510)
Peroxide treatment is great for giving the mycelium a head start on competing microbes. The expense of hydrogen peroxide is less than that of the equipment and fuel required for heat pasteurization, which has a similar effect. Another advantage is that peroxide is fairly harmless—H202 (hydrogen dioxide, another name for hydrogen peroxide) creates only water and oxygen as by-products. Its main limitation is that this method is more convenient for small-scale applications than for large-scale ones. The peroxide available for use by consumers at retail stores is approximately 3 percent concentration. Other products with higher concentrations are available for commercial use and are sold under various brand names, including Oxidate, for instance, which contains 27 percent hydrogen dioxide. To treat straw with hydrogen peroxide: Acquire 1 liter (about 1 quart) of hydrogen peroxide diluted in water to a concentration of 3 percent. (Caution: Higher concentrations can cause burning!) Soak straw with water until thoroughly wet, drain, rinse again with water, and drain. Gather 5 to 10 pounds of straw, and place in a waterproof container (plastic bag, bucket, or other container). Pour 1 liter of hydrogen peroxide into 1 gallon of fresh water, then pour onto the straw, thoroughly mixing and, preferably, submerging the straw into the peroxide bath. Cover and soak for 24 hours. Rinse the peroxide-saturated straw with fresh, clean water, submerging the straw, and then drain. Rinse and drain again. After rinsing the second time with clean water, immediately introduce mycelium to the straw, evenly distributing it mixing with your hands. Make sure your hands are clean and moist before you touch the mycelium. Perforate the sides and bottom of the plastic bag with holes every few inches or, if using a bucket, every 4 inches; perforate the top of either the bag or bucket every 4 inches to allow for some passage of air. (The holes are for drainage, intake of fresh air, and exhaust of carbon dioxide.) Incubate for 1 to 3 weeks, depending upon the species. Once the straw is colonized, you can either fruit mushrooms from the myceliated straw or use the straw as spawn for inoculating more substrates. Initiate fruiting (see chapter 14 for fruiting processes of individual species). Typically, this involves exposing the myceliated straw to the ideal temperature, watering, and exposure to indirect natural or fluorescent light. (Location 3524)
The key to successful pasteurization is to maintain the balance between the temperatures that neutralize competitors and those that preserve microbial allies. (Location 3624)
Mushroom cultivation is an art. Pasteurization is a selective treatment, and straw is a selective substrate. Combining all 3 is an effective strategy for navigating around obstacles that limit success. Once the mycelium takes hold and springs back, mycelial momentum normally eclipses competition. (Location 3636)
Leached cow manure is obtained from manure collected by dairies from their milking barns. The manure is cleaned from the cement slabs in the barns and removed to a separator—a machine that separates the roughage from the liquid effluent; the latter is redistributed to the pastures as fertilizer. The roughage—a rich but fairly loose dark material similar in texture to peat moss—is typically piled up as waste material. Large dairies generate tons of this material per week but have little or no market for it, and so they will sell it at a very low price: just $5 to $10 for a typical truckload of about a thousand pounds. The advantages of using leached cow manure include the following: It is a readymade compost ideal for many coprophilic mushrooms. Using this compost eliminates the need for expensive and often dangerous heavy machinery normally needed for composting systems. The expense of this equipment limits entry into the market by smaller growers. The compost can be collected hot and self-heats to near pasteurization temperatures naturally. It can be used outdoors or indoors; if it’s used indoors, transferring the compost into an insulated growing room for final pasteurization will require little additional heat. This third advantage is very important, since the natural warming by hungry thermophilic microbes offsets the cost of heating the substrate. The texture and composition allows for easy handling in filling and spawning. The biggest disadvantage of using leached cow manure is that the yields are not as impressive as those now commonly touted by the button mushroom industry. Depending upon the species, mushroom yields from unsupplemented leached cow manure are 1 to 2 pounds per square foot, whereas button mushroom compost boasts 5 to 7 pounds per square foot. However, adding supplements like Spawn Mate can boost yields, and if you take into account the amount of start-up capital required of the home or small-scale commercial grower, leached cow manure seems economically attractive. Its ease of use makes it a preferred material of many who have tried it. In some ways, leached cow manure has been the best-kept secret in the mushroom cultivation industry. (Location 3646)
Rapid composting, although it may seem alarming to those concerned about global warming, actually reduces carbon dioxide in the long term by providing a nutritional soil for oxygen-generating plants. The quick return of nutrients back into the food chain fortifies plant communities that consume increasingly more carbon dioxide as they proliferate. The dance between carbon dioxide producers, the fungi, and carbon dioxide consumers, the plants, is the foundation of the continuous flow of nutrients in evolving environments. Our modern lifestyles disrupt this balance by creating more debris fields than can be returned to the food chain, causing deficits in the nutrient cycles and destabilizing the harmony of healthy ecosystems. (Location 3734)
Whether primary or secondary saprophytes produce soil, and whether the soil is already rich with microbes, without mycorrhizae the plants are weaker and more susceptible to opportunistic disease. Gardeners using mushroom compost need mycorrhizae to help their plants. (Location 3739)
The ideal trees for stump or log cultivation are those that the mushroom species grows upon naturally. (Location 3774)
In many cases, storms or catastrophic events provide “windfalls” of wood for mushroom growers, who can assist with efforts to clean up storm debris. (Location 3796)
As an alternative to burning, which causes pollution, sudden emissions of carbon dioxide, and denutrification of soil, growing fungi on wood allows for the entrainment of nutrients back into the ecosystem, improvement in soil structure, and the gradual release of carbon dioxide over many years. (Location 3800)
