Fungi's magic for climate change

Today's snowdrops

It has been a long while since the last post, since my mind has been on subjects far removed from mushrooms. My obsession with all things fungi must have decided to take time off for Christmas - but it's back now, all refreshed and ready to keep me going for yet another year.

And not a moment too soon, as it looks like spring has arrived to Scotland two months early. First spring flowers have come out, buds on the trees are opening, and little birds in my garden just wouldn't shut up. As for the drakes on the mill pond... Ahem. All right, I'll stop right there, but you get the idea.

While I was pondering over the current weather anomaly, a message dropped into my inbox with a link to an article about fungi competing with microbes for nitrogen in soil, therefore preventing the latter from breaking up plant matter. This results in more carbon being retained in the soil, as opposed to being released into the atmosphere to add to the greenhouse effect. The article notes that not all fungi are created equal in this respect. It is just the ecto- and ericoid mycorrhizal fungi that do this, with their soil samples containing 70% more carbon than those of arbuscular mycorrhizal ones.

The most famous example of an ectomycorrhizal fungus is the cep (Boletus edulis). So here is an additional incentive to learn to cultivate it: if only we learned how, in addition to an amazing food source, we wouldn't need to worry about climate change anymore...

Behind the scenes at Kew Gardens

The short video below gives a behind-the-scenes view of Kew fungarium. It is the largest collection of dried fungi in the world, with 1.25 million samples. As you can see, I am still not over the impression that the current events at Kew Gardens have made on me. Finally, there is an institution that not only recognises the importance of fungi, but also makes a serious attempt to promote this idea to the general public!

It particularly pleases me that their mushroom-oriented programme of events is running over the school holidays and is directed at children. The present attitude to fungi in Britain, which can be summarised as "Stay away from those hideous things!" upsets me greatly, even though it means that I have zero competition while foraging. I'm glad that there are efforts in place to change this. Although, perhaps they shouldn't have named one of their kid-friendly workshops "Hands-on with magical mushrooms"...

More mushroom cultivation

Lately I have been thinking more and more of it - and accordingly, watching videos on how it's done. Here is how they do it in California (not that it's different from anywhere else!)

The essential steps to growing mushrooms, according to this video, are:

- making mushroom compost
- peak-heat
- spawning
- casing
- pinning
- harvesting

Enjoy, and see you next week for more mushroom stories!

Which kind of chanterelle?

Early chanterelles

A recent news article raises an interesting issue, which is that many mushrooms that we normally think of as a single species, are not. Kathryn Perez and Matthew Foltz proved by DNA analysis that golden chanterelles growing in Hixon Forest in Wisconsin are in fact three different species, and not merely colour variants.

Chanterelles are mushrooms that I collect every foraging trip, and one thing I have been puzzled about is how long their fruiting season is. It starts in mid-June and continues until mid-October, and sometimes even later if there is no ground frost. No other fungus in the local forest covers even half of that span.


Over these four months, it does not fruit everywhere though, but rather there are "early" and "late" spots, and the mushrooms from these do have a difference in appearance. Early chanterelles are typically smaller and lighter in colour, with cream stems and wavy false gills. Later in the year, I see only yolk-coloured, larger fungi.

Late chanterelles

Previously, I thought that the difference in shape and colour is explained by the variance in conditions in which these chanterelles grow, temperature- and humidity-wise, but I realise now that their emergence in different spots probably does mean that they are distinct species.

Not sure about one thing though - the article says, "Documenting the new species, their locations, and physical differences including taste, will be of interest to the culinary industry". I am no mycologist, but I have cooked a lot of chanterelles in my life. You can trust me on this: these mushrooms might look different, but THEY ALL TASTE THE SAME!

What's the largest living thing on the planet?

Hint: it's not a giant panda! The video might seem light-hearted, but it asks a very important question: what is the meaning of a "single living organism"? The two examples of the largest ones push the definition to the limit.

Enjoy the video, and come back tomorrow, for more mushroom stories!

Crazy ideas

Stage one: putting in spores

This weekend there was no forest trip, alas. This forager fell victim to a rather nasty common cold virus and had to spend a few days under a warm blanket, with painkillers and lots of tea and raspberry jam.

It wasn't all that bad. In fact, I think all people need a break from normal routine once in a while. We keep hearing that finding a cure for common cold is imminent, but I sure hope it won't happen in my lifetime.

Anyway, while semi-conscious in bed, I had this brilliant idea of how to cultivate chanterelles. All you have to do is to make a plantation of tiny trees of the required variety (birch, beech or pine will all work), put in some chanterelle spores, and - voila! You have a cultivated chanterelle.

Need I say that my paracetamol-infused brain could not find a single thing wrong with this plan! So I dragged myself from under the blanket, found the biggest chanterelle I had in the fridge and stuck it next to my rescued beech sapling that I found uprooted by forest management operations a few months ago.

Now that life is beginning to get back to normal, I have my doubts. But who knows, it might just work. There was at least one report of successful cultivation of chanterelles, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Fungi in space

That's what Martian colonisation
should look like

I recently came across a web site recruiting a crew to go to Mars. The project's name is Mars One, and their plan is to set up the first permanent extraterrestrial human settlement, and also make a reality show which would finance its operations. To date, about 78 thousand people have submitted their applications, although this figure is rather misleading since only about 700 out of these actually sent in complete applications, including the fee.

The scheme has already been multiply criticised for not being feasible, mostly for financial reasons. I also disapprove, and predictably so, because there seems to be no place for fungi in their plans for life support modules.

Generally, given the diversity of possible fungi uses, it is surprising how little presence they have in schemes for space colonisation. Mars One project aside, several governments are currently making plans for constructing a permanent lunar base in the next decade, and those look fairly realistic to me. However, no one seems to be paying any attention to the potential use of fungi: all references I've managed to find online were dealing with unwanted fungal infestations and how to contain them in enclosed space habitats.

I really don't understand why. Fungi are an excellent source of food, both directly as edible mycelium or fruit bodies, and indirectly through increasing the yield of food plants. In addition, they can offer production of cheap biofuel from plant waste and also provide packaging and structural materials as a renewable alternative to plastics.

Right, now if you'll excuse me, I have these calls to make to NASA and RosKosmos. They must be shown the errors of their ways immediately.

Image: This is my photo of an artist's vision of a Mars colony; the author of the painting is Diana Nurtdinova from Pervouralsk, Russia.

Dreams... and reality

11 June 2012

After yet another fruitless expedition for my beloved chanterelles this weekend, I've decided to turn to my photo archives, to see what pickings were like in the previous years.

I really was quite sure that I was collecting mushrooms as early as late May, and this post was going to be full of complaints about the late cold spring and how grass was greener in the years past.

Somewhat sheepishly, I have to admit that all I really have to complain about is my faulty memory: I have been faithfully recording the results of my mushroom forays since 2007, and the earliest photo I could find was dated 11th June, and only one other was taken on 13th June.

13 June 2010

Apart from identifying false memories, I discovered something else while going through the photo archives: it appears that early start of the season and abundance, or otherwise, of early mushrooms, have no predictive value as to how good pickings are going to be. 2012 was in fact one of the poorer years, 2010 only average, and the best year I've had so far was 2011, the first photo record for which was in early July. I collected so many mushrooms that summer that at some point I ran out of freezer space, and for about two months my long-suffering family ate wild mushrooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They of course knew better than to complain.

So it looks like there is hope for a good season yet. Just need a little patience.

Friday video - spore dispersal tricks

This is footage of spore emission tricks in a few fungi species. The hat-thrower fungus from my post two weeks ago makes a brief appearance at 01:18, although its unique ability is not commented upon. But we already know how great it is, right?

I have to say that slime moulds are no longer classified as fungi, and the "field mushroom" is either a bay bolete or a very similar species, but the sequences with the giant puffball and especially the earth star, in my opinion, more than compensate for these errors.

Warning: contains stinkhorn close-ups! Thus not quite safe for work.

Enjoy, and see you next week for yet more fungi-related tales.

Fungi for better cider

Scientific research in progress (spot a PhD student)

This week I came across a podcast about a research project conducted by a university lab in Sheffield and sponsored by Heinekken, the producer of Bulmers cider. This project looks at fungal relationships of apple trees in the attempt to find varieties of fungi that will increase the yield and quality of their fruit.

Mycorrhizal association between plants and fungi is a symbiotic relationship benefitting both partners. The plant provides the fungus with the sugars from photosynthesis, and the fungus carries soil nutrients to the plant roots, allowing the plant to feed from a much larger area than its roots actually cover.

The fungi are not all equal, and some species will give their symbiont plant more than others. The goal of the project is to find out, which ones. There are about 160 potted experimental subjects, all apple trees of the same cider-producing variety, most infected with specific species of fungi, and some in sterile soil. In the course of the next three years each of them will be evaluated for fruit yield, general health, and pathogen and pest resistance. One PhD student, Despina Berdeni, is charged with their care and making the required measurements. There are certainly easier ways to obtain a doctorate! I hope she and her lab get some free cider from Heinekken for all their hard work.

The full podcast can be found on the Planet Earth Online web site.

Image credit:
Horse-driven apple crusher in Jersey

The case of fly agaric

Belle of the woods

It's Wednesday, and therefore time for a new species highlight. Originally, I was planning to alternate the feature between edible and inedible/toxic mushrooms. Last week it was chanterelles, so I thought, I need something equally well-known to introduce the poisonous varieties. And what fungus can do better than the iconic fly agaric, Amanita muscaria?

And then, I got on the web to check my facts, and got confused. Whereas all mushroom identification guides I've come across unanimously list this fungus as both poisonous and hallucinogenic, a quick web search threw up several links where people were consuming fly agarics as food.

The trick, apparently, lies in boiling them for at least 15 minutes in lots of water. This removes both the toxin (muscarine) and the hallucinogens (ibotenic acid and muscimol). Afterwards, the mushroom can be fried in butter and has an "unusual nutty taste" which "makes you wish for more".

Interesting taste is not the only argument of the proponents for its food consumption. They point out that the fly agaric is available in large quantities, that there are lots of other foods we eat that are toxic raw (red kidney beans for instance) and that it is almost impossible to misidentify. All true! But then, given the large variation in toxicity, boiling may not be sufficient to detoxify some strains; in addition, they need to be kept separately from other mushrooms to avoid contamination with the spores, which are also toxic; and finally, collecting these fungi can be illegal. You fancy explaining to your local policeman that the 3 kilos of red-capped mushrooms in your basket are for family dinner? Me neither.

Giant fly agarics in Minecraft

So, all things considered, I'd give fly agarics a wide berth, and only collect them as photos. And in Minecraft. Red mushrooms with white dots are safe to eat there and are farmed for both food and building material. Could it be where Ecovative got their ideas from?..

Links to some of the articles:

Eating Santa's Shroom

Fat of the Land's blog

On the subject of fly agarics (this one is about what can happen if you do not cook them properly)

Image credit: 

Fly agaric engraving by William Miller

The fastest thing on the planet!

Another amazing video from BBC Nature. Apparently, a tiny fungus that lives on horse poo is the fastest thing on Earth. The spore pod is ejected from the fungus body at 20,000 g. Wow! I hope you enjoy the clip as much as I did, and see you next week!

Is it edible, or poisonous?

And the moral of this story...

I once heard a story about a man in Russian village who was an avid mushroom gatherer. In the warm time of year he would go to nearby woodland, or to the fields, and bring back a good crop, the greater part of which would be dried, pickled or frozen by his wife to be enjoyed during long Russian winters, and some of it she would make into family dinner. One day they got a neighbour, who came to settle in their village from a city. The delicious smells of mushrooms cooked in sour cream reached his nostrils, he knocked on their door, and they grudgingly invited him to share their meal.

The culprit

The next morning the man and his wife were working in their garden when their new neighbour staggered out of his house, all green-faced, and claimed that they had fed him poisonous mushrooms. The man pointed out that it was nonsense because they were all eating from the same pot, and both he and his wife were well. With gardening done, he got his basket and went on another foraging trip, and came back in the evening with more mushrooms. By that time the neighbour recovered enough for the delicious smell of mushrooms to lure him again to the man's house, and the meal was shared again.

In the morning... you guessed it. It is unknown how many attempts it took for the neighbour to get the message, but apparently in the end he thought that village life did not suit him at all, and he went back to the city.

If you read this post, you probably realised by now that the mushroom stew contained common ink caps, Coprinopsis atramentaria, and also that the good man and his wife were teetotallers, while their neighbour was a drinker. A common ink cap is edible and tasty on its own, but consume any alcohol with it, and you'll be off mushrooms, and food generally, for a while.

To summarise: someone you know likes to turn up to dinner uninvited? Now you know how to deal with the problem.

Image credits:
Soviet anti-alcohol propaganda poster from 1980s, public domain
Faltentintlinge (Coprinopsis atramentaria). Illustration by Albin Schmalfuß, 1897, public domain

6 ways mushrooms can save the world

An interesting talk by mycologist Paul Stamets, originally posted in May 2008. Don't be put off by the length of the video: for a true fungi lover, these are 17 minutes very well spent.



His bio on TED web site: http://www.ted.com/speakers/paul_stamets.html

Have a good weekend, everyone, and see you next week, for the foray report and more.

Want to lose weight?

If you are, like me, a woman between the age of 30 and 50 and have a presence on social networking sites, you must share my frustration with the ads. Literally, all of them tell me I must click on them to learn this one "weird tip" on how to lose weight. And you know what that tip is? "Eat less, exercise more". Yep. Bad news. There is no other way to shed those pounds.

Agaricus bisporus, an often-
overlooked wonder food

Now, unless you are an active forager, mushrooms are not likely to help you with exercise. However, they can help you to eat less, or rather, significantly lower the calorie content of your food. This is because the energy content of 100 grams of mushrooms is just 16 kilocalories. For comparison, 100 grams of lean beef mince contain 173 kcal, and 100 grams of pork contain 263 kcal. The only foods with similarly low values are celery (14kcal), lettuce (14kcal) and cucumber (16kcal). However, none of these you can add to pasta sauce or a stew, while mushrooms will do just fine. Substitute half of your meat with mushrooms, and the calorie value of your dish will, too, drop by half. What's more, the meal will seem to be just as filling since you'd be consuming the same volume of food, and it will taste just as great because mushrooms would absorb and enhance any flavours already present.

Shiitake: packed with goodness,
waiting for you at local supermarket

I think everybody should love mushrooms just for this one wondrous property, but they have to offer even more. They are a great source of dietary fibre, five types of vitamin B and several essential minerals. Some exotic varieties offer significant health benefits, such as antimicrobial and antiviral properties, and even lowering the risk of breast and prostate cancer. But even the most mundane and widely available kinds are surprisingly good. Thus, white button mushrooms contain large amounts of powerful antioxidants (these protect your cells from damage and slow down ageing), and shiitake mushrooms will boost your immune system, lower blood cholesterol and help prevent heart disease. So, get some next time you go past the mushroom isle in your local supermarket. They are all good for you.

Image credits:
Agaricus bisporus, used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license;
Shiitake mushroom, used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Fungi are not plants... but...

Just for the sheer beauty of images in this video I am prepared to forgive the inaccuracy. I hope you enjoy this short clip from David Attenborough's series "The Private Life of Plants" as much as I did. I'll be back on Monday, with fungal facts, recipes and more.

Identification and rules of thumb

The key point of the video that inspired the previous post was, "If you don't know what it is, don't eat it".

But how do you actually identify your mushroom, and are there any reliable indicators that the mushroom in question is edible?

Putting a name to a mushroom can be a challenging task, because the fruitbodies that we eat are not the organism itself but merely its reproductive organs. So what we are trying to do here is essentially the same as attempting to identify a mammal by the shape of its... erm... lungs or kidneys. How do we do that?

1. Fungus appearance. A good mushroom guide will list perhaps 30 possible characteristics that need to be looked at, such as cap size and colouring, shape and position of gills, stipe markings, etc. etc.   If you have all day, great, because you'll need it. Don't forget a dictionary. Half of the words won't make sense at first reading.

2. Ecology. Where is the fungus found? As mentioned in the previous post, there are many lookalikes that can fool even an experienced forager if put next to each other, but can still be easily told apart since they form relationships with different trees. For instance, the poisonous woolly milk cap from the previous post is associated with birch, while the delicious saffron milk cap grows under pine.

3. Spores. It is impossible to do a spore print in the field, but completing it greatly improves the chances for correct identification. Just put the spore-bearing part of your fungus over two pieces paper, white and coloured, and wait for 24 hours. If you want to be really thorough, you can also look at the spores under a good microscope, but this will probably take you over the line beyond which a hobby becomes obsession. Keep it healthy. Breathe.

Remember me?

But what if you don't wish to remember all of these details, and do not want to wait for spore prints? Suppose, you have a can of soup to improve NOW! Any, hmm, rules of thumb?

For instance, is the mushroom safe to eat if its cap peels? Or if you find it complete with a slug, happily munching on its stipe? In fact, deathcaps can be eaten by slugs and insects (they are unaffected by the toxins) and have a peelable cap. These are the two most dangerous misconceptions of which I am aware, but all other "edible mushroom indicators" I've come across are at best useless. So, are we definitely stuck with making spore prints?

Not quite. There is a bit of good news. One reliable rule of thumb does exist, and it is based on ecology. There is a habitat where all mushrooms that are to be found are 100% edible, guaranteed.

This place is your local supermarket*, and it is the subject of tomorrow's post.

Image credit: Amanita phalloides and slug, used under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
_________________
* As with all rules of thumb, this advice is offered "as is", to be used at your own risk. If you do manage to get mushroom poisoning as the result of following it, sue the supermarket. They have more money than me anyway.

The first thing you need to know about fungi...

Now this is some good advice

Recently I saw a feature on BBC news, about a woman who decided to improve a can of soup with a deathcap fungus (Amanita phalloides) that was growing in her back yard, with predictable results.

The story is tragic, but eating any kind of amanita, or indeed any wild mushroom if you don't now what "amanita" means, is in my mind equal to violating such safety rules as "look before crossing the road" and "don't pour petrol over open fire". Deathcaps are not to blame. This mother-of-four was killed by her recklessness and ignorance.

Unfortunately, the video that goes with the article does nothing to address the issue. In it Mark Lloyd, chef and forager, gives some sensible advice, "if you don't know what it is, don't eat it", but also makes two statements that made me scream "someone is wrong on the internet" and run to the nearest networked computer to write this post.

"They <deathcaps> are wild plants". No, they are not. They have a kingdom of their own, Fungi, and are distinct from plants, animals, or bacteria. They have chitin rather than cellulose in their cell walls, which indicates that on the great tree of life they are closer to animals than plants. They also have a unique lifecycle that is unlike that of any other multicellular organism, but I'll leave this subject for another post.

Woolly milk cap and saffron milk cap.
Which one would you eat?

"A mushroom that grows in a certain area, under a certain tree, is perfectly fine, and if it grows under a different tree, it will draw toxins from that tree and become poisonous". Now, I'm not sure what's going on here, since this is presented as one of the "tricks" that you need to know before you go mushroom hunting. A not-so-subtle way to get people onto this chef's foraging courses, perhaps? The truth is, fungi can draw nasty substances from places like busy roads, or toxic and radioactive waste dumps, but not from plants. Instead, you can have two very similar species of mushrooms that are associated with different trees, one of which would be safe to eat, while the other may cause a stomach upset or worse. An example of these could be woolly milk cap and saffron milk cap, or yellow staining mushroom and field mushroom. Therefore, it is not a "trick" but a matter of proper identification.

There, it's off my chest, I can breathe again, until next time.

Image credits:
Deathcap warning sign, public domain
Woolly milk cap, used under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Saffron milk cap, used under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.