Archive for the ‘Info’ Category
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 [...]
Tags: compost, logs, mushroom growing, mycocluture, wood chips
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I think it was on a cooking show on the radio the other day (or maybe just a news report) that I heard that a fungal disease was playing havoc with basil plants in some parts of the U.S. I figured it might be worth looking into. Sure enough, a Google news search for “basil” [...]
Tags: basil, downy mildew, Margaret McGrath, Peronospora
The Telluride Mushroom Festival in Telluride, Colorado (where else?) will be held from August 26-29, 2010. This, dubbed the 30th Annual Celebration of All Things Fungal & Entheogenic, features guest speakers Paul Stamets, Gary Lincoff and Daniel Winkler, among others. From the Festival website: A four-day intensive with workshops, slide-shows, films and lectures in Colorado’s [...]
Tags: Colorado, Daniel Winkler, Gary Lincoff, Paul Stamets, Telluride Mushroom Festival
Mushroom photographer Taylor Lockwood has returned from his expedition to Brazil and the Amazon River region. While there he was able to get some great new photographs of interesting mushrooms, including the recently discovered bioluminescent species. He reports that there was quite a bit of of local traffic in the area where these mushrooms are [...]
Tags: Amazon, bioluminescence, Brazil, Mycena, mycoremediation, Pleurotus, Taylor Lockwood
You know it is a good day at the library when you walk by the magazine rack and see a false-color electron micrograph image of a conidiophore on a cover. It was the cover of the May 22, edition of ScienceNews, which happened to contain a feature article entitled I, Mold by Laura Bell. It [...]
Tags: Aspergillus, Candida, Cryptococcus, fungal disease, medical mycology, mold, ScienceNews
More museums ought to do stuff like this. The National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, Bulgaria recently put together a display, The mushrooms – familiar or dangerous: Briefly presented is kingdom Fungi – characteristics, distribution, and systematics. Photos and replicas show the most popular edible mushrooms and their poisonous counterparts, and how to distinguish [...]
Tags: Bulgaria, mushrooms, Science Centric
If you plan on collecting more than “a gallon” of mushrooms in the State of Washington, you better get your permit. Details in Commercial mushroom permits available published by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin: Permits for commercial mushroom gathering in the three Blue Mountain forests are now available. The permits are required for anyone intending to [...]
Tags: commercial collecting, mushroom collecting, permits, Washington state, wild mushrooms
The Yeast Resource Center Public Image Repository (YRC PIR) is a large database of fluorescence microscopy images of yeast, with a focus on the important model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae with some attention given to S. pombe. 84,270 Experiments 530,982 images ~450 gigabytes of data Not bad. A press release posted at 7th Space offers a [...]
Tags: fluorescence microscopy, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast, Yeast Resource Center Public Image Repository, YRC PIR
Afghan poppy farmers, who grow a big chunk of the poppies used to supply the world with opium, are accusing NATO of infecting their fields with a poppy-killing fungus. They just might be right. According to Fungus hits Afghan opium poppies: A serious disease is affecting opium poppies in Afghanistan, Antonio Maria Costa, the head [...]
Tags: biocontrol, mycoherbacide, opium, Papaver somniferum, Pleospora papaveracea, poppies
