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Section XIV : Plant Sciences 7
of mushrooms specially Boletes. Prior to Dr. Roy Watling’s visit one of his students
Dr. Alexander, who worked on the mycorrhiza, visited Shimla as a guest of the
Conifer Research Centre, now Himalayan Forest Research Institute. It was he who
for the first time introduced me to mycorrhiza; these visits led to my ‘symbiotic
association and journey with mushrooms and mycorrhiza’.
Since Agaricales is a large assemblage of mushrooms and toadstools, comprising
more than 20 families (Singer, 1986), instead of initiating work on all families,
I decided to begin family wise survey, starting with the family Boletaceae (Sharma
and Lakhanpal, 1981; Sharma, 1980, Sharma, 1986; Sagar 1988; Lakhanpal, 1996).
In the family Boletaceae 7 genera and 57 species were recorded. The seven
genera recorded are Austroboletus (1) Boletus (37), Gyproporus (2), Leccinum
(6), Strobilomyces (3), Suillus (5) and Tylopilus (3). This work included 5 new
species and an equal number of new varieties. The work on Boletaceae was
compiled into a monograph : Mushrooms of India-Boletaceae (Lakhanpal, 1996)
The systematics was accompanied by supplementary data on edible species and 22
species in Boletaceae were found to be edible. Among these Boletus edulis was
the species of choice. Besides a new species B. hoarkii sp. nov. was also
identified. About 22 species of boletes were identified to be mycorrhizal with
different predominant tree species.
In 1981, the mushroom exploration was extended to the families Amanitaceae,
Russulaceae and Cantharellaaceae. The collections were primarily made from
Shimla and adjoining areas. In these collections the genus Amanita in Amanitaceae
was represented by 12 species; genus Lactarius and Russula in Russulaceae by
14 and 22 species, respectively and genus Cantharellus and Craterellus by 5 and
2 species respectively (Bhatt, 1986; Bhatt and Lakhanpal, 1988a, b,c). With the
sanctioning of a project on mushrooms by the Department of Science and
Technology (GOI) in 1983, work was extended to different parts of Himachal
Pradesh and 6 more species in Amanitaceae were collected bringing the total
number to 18 in the N. W. Himalayas and 25 in India (Kumar, 1987). This resulted
in the publication of “Amanitaceae of India” (Kumar et al. , 1990). This work
included 4 taxa new to science, 13 species were observed to be mycorrhizal with
different trees species. Out of these only Amanita caesaria and A. vaginata were
found to be edible and consumed locally by the people. Typical A. muscaria was
not recorded however; only A. muscaria var. flavivolvata was recorded. Similarly
the exploration was also intensified on Russulaceae and Cantharellaceae (Bhatt,
1986).