Wild mushrooms have been collected by people for food since before recorded history. Once is it was figured out which ones were the best to eat, it made sense to try to grow them to have a more reliable supply. It is difficult to trace the origin of mushroom cultivation but some species have been [...]
I don’t get out on many mushroom hunts these days, but with the record one-day rainfall of last week, I figured that over the weekend it would be as good a time as any to get out. So, on Sunday, September 18 we took a short trip over to Black Forest County park in El [...]
Tags: Colorado, Foray, mushrooms, wild mushrooms
Literally hundreds of videos a month that are found with keyword searches for “mushrooms”, “fungi” or “mycology” are posted to YouTube every month. Most are irrelevant to our interests but a few are worth checking out. Here are four that are worth more than a cursory look and they are posted at Fungal Visions. Fungal [...]
Tags: Fungal Visions, video
I love TED talks. I just saw a new one featuring Eben Bayer of evocativedesign, creator of MycoBond, an organic adhesive that turns mycelium and substrate into a foam-like material for packaging and insulation. The company’s ecocradle is a foam packaging material and greensulate is an insulating material. I previously wrote about evocativedesign in First [...]
Tags: evocativedesign, Greensulate, MycoBond, mycoplastic, TED
That’s Wired the magazine. I was perusing the February, 2011 issue and happened upon an interesting little feature recently introduced, “The Most Dangerous Object in the Office.” What? Mushrooms? Yep. The folks at Wired have set up a Mushroom Box Mini Growing System, a small mushroom growing chamber, and have been watching mushrooms grow. But [...]
Tags: hobby mushrooms, mushroom box mini growing system, mushroom growing, Wired
Four new YouTube videos have been posted at Fungal Visions, a site that collects and features videos about fungi (“Who needs viral videos when you can have fungal videos?”). These are on the BillNyeRulz channel although it is far from clear that Bill Nye has anything to do with them. I rather doubt it actually [...]
Tags: Fungal Visions, video, YouTube
Whether you collect mushrooms for fun, for food, or for profit, proper identification is key. Making a spore print to see the spore color will help to avoid mistakes. Some mushrooms are easy to identify because of their distinctive appearance. For example, the edible shaggy mane (Coprinus comatus) and the toxic fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) [...]
Tags: mushroom identification, spore print, spores, techniques
A spot for the television program Law and Order Special Victims Unit caught my attention during a break from watching Sunday Night Football. According to the episode trailer at the NBC website, some toxic South American mushrooms are used as a murder weapon. As the voice over announcer puts it, it’s “the case of the [...]
Tags: mushrooms on TV, television, TV shows
According to Are mushrooms the solution to the beach closings on Madison’s lakes? a coalition of local non-profit orgnizations aims to employ fungi as part of a plan to clean up the beaches of Lake Wingra in Wisconsin. Christina Cappy, a member of the UW-Madison chapter of Engineers Without Borders and one of the coordinators [...]
Tags: bioremediation, Lake Wingra, mushrooms, mycoremediation
For some reason, at this time of year I start thinking about what to read over the holidays. If you like studying and learning about fungi, you are probably up for a good topical read once in awhile, not matter what tie of year it is. We’re not talking about the raft of mushroom cookbooks [...]
Tags: books, mushroom books, mycology books, Mycorrhizae, reading
I recently read The Vertical Farm, Feeding the world in the 21st Century, by Dickson Despommier (2010, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY) and I also got a chance to chat with him on the phone to get some information for an article I wrote for a magazine. Dr. Despommier is a [...]
Tags: Dickson Despommier, mushroom growing, sustainable agriculture, vertical farm, vertical mushroom farm
Someone I follow on Twitter first clued me into the existence of Spiral a few months ago. I wish I could remember who it was so I could thank them, but alas… Sorry. Whoever it was, I thank them for the tip because Spiral is a great read. My first look at Spiral came at [...]
Tags: books, Cornell, fungal bioweapons, Kathie Hodge, mycofiction, Paul McEuen
Awhile back I wrote a post wondering What Ever Happened to Cantharellus AB? It must have been in the early 90′s when I first heard about the company, which had been formed to commercialize the production of chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) mushrooms. I even received a call from the company president in the lab at UT [...]
Tags: Cantharellus AB, Cantharellus cibarius, chanterelles, Eric Danell, matsutake, Matsutake AB, mushroom growing, Niclas Bergius, Sweden, Tricholoma matsutake
The movie Know Your Mushrooms by Canadian producer Ron Mann does have some legitimately posted trailers on the internet—like at the official movie website. There are a few clips on YouTube but none them look all that “authorized” to me. There is this KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS Excerpt featuring Gary Lincoff, which is still up so [...]
Tags: copyright, know your mushrooms, video, YouTube
The latest issue of National Geographic has a short but interesting article on the continuing crises haunting the population of hibernating bats. The article “Bat Crash” by David Quammen, and an accompanying photo gallery, is available online via the magazine website. The article webpage also offers a video of how photographer Stephen Alvarez photographed a [...]
Tags: bats, Geomyces destructans, National Geographic, white nose syndrome, WNS
I just got back from four days of camping in the Rockies with about 250 6th graders. If you are interested in what those four days were like (cold, sunny, tiring!) you can check out my teacher blog at Mister McIntosh Says. The most recent three posts describe that experience. The location was High Trails, [...]
Tags: lichens, montane life zone, Rocky Mountains
There have been quite a few news reports so far this year about mushroom poisonings around the world. The biggest news was the so-called “mushroom massacre” in Italy in which 18 or so people died. But that turned out to be a bit overblown (from the mycotoxological perspective) since most of the deaths (maybe even [...]
Tags: mushroom collecting, mushroom poisoning, poisonous mushrooms, toxic fungi
I couldn’t help but notice What If Terrorists Use the ‘Zombie Ant’ Brain Fungus to Make Zombie Suicide Bombers? at Gawker.com: Remember that brain fungus that forces “zombie ants” to leave their colonies and march around feeding a fungal organism in their brains until one day it pops out and kills them? What if the [...]
Tags: Cordyceps, entomopathogenic fungi, Ophiocordyceps, paranoia, terrorism, zombie ant fungus
I recently learned about a new mycology-themed film called Now, Forager produced by Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin. Jason is the newsletter editor for the New York Mycological Society. Cortlund and Halperin are experienced filmmakers and judging by the trailer (see below) this looks to be a quality project. The story follows a husband and [...]
Tags: Foraging, mushroom films, Now Forager
Radical Mycology Convergence September 2-5, 2011 (Labor Day weekend) The Radical Mycology Convergence will be held September 2-5, 2011 (Labor Day weekend) in Concrete, WA (2 hours NE of Seattle). What: A free, volunteer-run gathering of mycologists, hobbyists, and Earth healers coming together to share skills and information about the benefits of the fungal kingdom [...]
Tags: mycology conference, mycology meeting, Radical Mycology Convergence
Oh good, a new mushroom book, I thought as I pulled the fresh-looking copy of Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America (Firefly Books, Buffalo, NY, 2010) by Roger Phillips off the shelf at my local library. For a new book, it looked awfully familiar for some reason. A quick scan of the front matter [...]
Tags: books, mushroom identification
Awhile back I snooped around eBay to see what sort of mushroom-related magazines were up for sale. Today I decided to check out the mushroom collectibles category. Over 3,000 items came up on a search for “mushrooms” narrowed to the “collectibles” category, sorted into 43 subcategories. I expected to see the usual tchotchkes, and the [...]
Tags: decorative mushrooms, eBay, mushoom collectibles, mushroom memorabelia
I was perusing a magazine called Woodturning Design the other day. Why? Well, I have always liked making stuff and I had purchased an old but good-quality wood lathe and some turning tools some years back. Last weekend I actually set it up and tried my hand at it. After some initial failures I succeeded [...]
Tags: decorative mushrooms, model mushrooms, wooden mushroom, woodworking
A definite asexual or sexual reproductive cycle is usually a prerequisite for the success of a species. Mycelia sterilia have found a way to do without either. Fungi (a group that includes molds, mushrooms, yeasts, and perhaps some other organisms that don’t neatly fit into any particular category) have evolved various reproductive strategies. The majority [...]
Tags: mycelia sterilia, spores
Every once in a while I like to look around eBay to see what sorts of things are up for sale that a person interested in mushrooms might find tempting. A general search for “mushrooms” turned up a little over 29,000 hits. Not all of these are of mycological relevance of course. For example, there [...]
Tags: collectors items, eBay, magazines
It would seem that when one’s eyes are peeled for any signs of valuable fungi, the probability of walking off of a cliff seem to go up considerably. At least that’s the story out of Italy these days, as the so called “massacre” of mushroom hunters has resulted in 18 deaths, ten of which were [...]
Tags: accidents, Italy, mushroom hunting, mushrorom massacre
I don’t know about anyone else, but I have been enjoying the Bravo show “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.” It’s one of those reality competition shows (like “Top Chef” or “Project Runway”) but with artists competing each week on a different challenge. I like it because of the creativity and expression, and because [...]
Tags: art, Bravo, creativity, Fungus Study, Jeanne Greenberg, Miles, nature, Work of Art
