GROWING GOURMET - Anto2ni.it

ducing organ: the mushroom. Furthermore,
the slowness from sowing the mycelium to
the final stages of harvest confounds the
quick feed-back all cultivators need to refine
their techniques. Thus, experiments trying to
mimic how Chanterelles or Matsutake grow
may take 20-40 years each, the age the trees
must be to support healthy, fruiting colonies
of these prized fungi. Faster methods are
clearly desirable, but presently only the natural
model has shown any clue to success.
Given the huge hurdle of time for honing
laboratory techniques, I favor the "low-tech"
approach of planting trees adjacent to known
producers of Chanterelles, Matsutake,
Truffles and Boletes. After several years, the
trees can be uprooted, inspected for mycorrhizae,
and replanted in new environments.
The value of the contributing forest can then
be viewed, not in terms of board feet of lumber,
but in terms of its ability for creating
satellite, mushroomltree colonies. When industrial
or suburban development threatens
entire forests, and is unavoidable, future-oriented
foresters may consider the removal of
the mycorrhizae as a last-ditch effort to salvage
as many mycological communities as
possible by simple transplantation techniques,
although on a much grander scale.
Until laboratory techniques evolve to establish
a proven track record of successful
marriages that result in harvestable crops, I
hesitate to recommend mycorrhizal mushroom
cultivation as an economic endeavor. Mycorrhizal
cultivation pales in comparison to the
predictability of growing saprophytic mushrooms
like Oyster and Shiitake. The industry
simply needs the benefit of many more years
of mycological research to better decipher the
complex models of mycorrhizal mushrooms.
THE ROLE OF MUSHROOMS IN NATURE 9
Figure 10. Oyster and Honey Mushrooms growing
on a stump.
Parasitic Mushrooms:
Blights of the Forest?
Parasitic fungi have been the bane of foresters.
They do immeasurable damage to the
health of resident tree species, but in the process,
create new habitats for many other
organisms. Although the ecological damage
caused by parasitic fungi is well understood,
we are only just learning of their importance
in the forest ecosystem. Comparatively few
mushrooms are true parasites.
Parasites live off a host plant, endangering
the host's health as it grows. Of all the parasitic
mushrooms that are edible, the Honey
Mushrooms, Armillaria mellea, are the best
known. One of these Honey Mushrooms,
known as Armillaria bulbosa, made national
headlines when scientists reported finding a
single colony covering 37 acres, weighing at
least 220,000 lbs. with an estimated age of
1500 years! With the exception of the trembling
Aspen forests of Colorado, this fungus
is the largest-known, living organism on the
planet. And, it is a marauding parasite!
In the past, a parasitic fungus has been
looked upon as being biologically evil. This
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