North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

What I find really interesting is that all those fruiting bodies might have come from a single underground mushroom.   The Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon is home to an Armillarea living under/within 2,200 acres.  It’s thought to be the largest living thing, and one of the oldest, at an age of perhaps 2,400 years.

 

I wouldn’t count on the mushroom reappearing.  Sometimes a single fruiting will exhaust the available food.  Mycellia can linger on, but will seek out other food, either growing underground or spreading their spores through the air.  I had a Stropharia patch that needed quite a bit of redressing after each flush.  I also inoculated the trunk from a fallen tree in our yard with Pleurotus, which produced one grand fruiting before a beautiful but toxic species moved in. 

 

As far as whether one wants to see Armillarea, A. mellea is, imho, delicious, with a couple caveats:  not at all good or recommended raw, and some people cannot have it with alcohol.  It won’t kill you, but won’t be pleasant. 

There seem to be two varieties – one that lives on dead tissue, and is probably a ‘good’ mushroom.  Another seems to be a killer, and just doesn’t want to wait for trees to die of other causes before moving in. 

 

~ Stephen

 

From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Kieran and/or Donna
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2010 10:46 AM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Mushroom Melanbopus

 

Jerry,  If you have that kind of mushroom every year, you can look for it in future years.  Some kinds don't appear every year though.  Eg Armillarea, which you don't want to see anyway.  I saw it on a dying English walnut in 1978, and then again about 1998.  That year it fruited everywhere in the southeast from what I heard.  And when I say everywhere, I mean in every hundred yard peice of woods here, and 15 miles away, and 150 miles away, and in Virginia too I was told.  Donna