Lecture 16: Wild Mushrooms

Thursday, March 29, 2018

1:27 PM
• Midterm 2
o Thursday April 12 in lecture
o Review sessions
• PS 404 5 and 7
• April 9 and 10
• SPORE due Friday March 30 at Noon
• Wild Mushrooms
o Spring is time to look for morels
• Morels are cup fungi in the genus Morchella (Ascomycota)
• Quite difficult to find - blend into enovironment well
• East coast
§ Look for them near dying trees
• Pacific NW
§ They pop up after forest fires
• Raw Morels are poisonous
§ Vomiting, cramping, diarrhea after 10 min to 4 hours
§ Toxins unknown
§ Need to cook before eating
o Mushroom season
• Almost all mushrooms have a distinct fruiting season (phenology) that is related to
climate
• In temperate climates, Fall is usually the best season
§ Probably because many wild mushrooms associate with tree roots and in fall
tree roots are rich in nutrients
§ Climate change is affecting the phenology of mushrooms
o Types of wild mushrooms
• Meadow mushrooms - similar to store button mushrooms
§ White caps and brown spores
• Giant puffballs
• Shaggy manes
§ Usually grow in new (2-4) year old lawns
§ These slowly digest themselves into a black ink
• Blewit
§ Purple mushroom
§ Found in old woodchips
• Black trumpet Craterellus
§ Thin fleshed and delicate mushroom
• Chanterelles
§ Cousins of black trumpet
§ False chanterelle
• Jack o'lantern mushrooms causes violent vomiting and diarrhea
o Poison mushrooms
• A small percentage (1-2%) of mushrooms are deadly
• A slight larger percentage will make you sick
• Other mushrooms just are not appetizing
• If a mushroom is poisonous, they have their own way of poisoning you
 • There is no reliable test to figure out whether a mushroom is poisonous, the only
way to tell is by eating it
§ No folklore about what is safe and not safe is reliable
o How do we know whats safe
• Charles Mcllvaine
§ Writer, mycologist and mycophagist
• Personally tired over 600 species of mushrooms in his lifetime
• Wrote a book a published it in 1901 which caused a craze
o Amanita group contains the most deadly mushrooms in the world
• The destroying angel is in this group
• Contain toxins called Amatoxin
• The death cap, Amanita phalloides
§ Introduced to NA and spreading
§ Symbiotic with trees like oaks and spruces
§ Half a cap could be enough to kill you
o Amatoxins
• Stop your cells from being able to make proteins
• Amatoxnins black RNA polymerase, a key enzyne in our cells
• Causes death through liver failure
§ Some victims only survive via liver transplantation
• Squirrels are immune to this toxin
o How to identify mushrooms
• Their shapes change as they grow
o The most common mushroom poisonings cause stomach aches
• Chlorophyllum molybdites
§ Has an unusual green spore print
§ Could kill a dog, but not a person
§ Will make you very sick
• Blue staining boletes cause stomach issues
§ Boletes have tubes instead of gills
§ Cannot be grown in cultivation
• Species of Hydnum have teeth reather than gills or tubes
• Chicken of the woods
§ Ok to eat if on hardwoods, but causes stomach issues if on pines (soft wood)
o International trade
• Wild mushroom harvest
• USA: 450k tons
• China: 5.5 million tons
o US Wild mushroom harvest
• Major harvests
§ Boletes, moreals, chanetelles, truffles
• Mushroom picker culture
§ Follow mushroom season north
§ Sell to brokers
§ Make decent money
o Why wild
• Many good edible mushrooms cannot be cultivated
o Matsutake mushrooms
• Most valuable when first starting to open
o Rise in mushroom pciking leads to concerns about over harvesting
• Most problem isnt over harvesting, but from trampling and habitat loss
 § Compressing the topsoil = mycelium damage
o Truffles
• Tuber melanosporum
§ The French Black Truffle
§ Only grows with trees
• Root symbiant
• Multiple types of truffles
• They grow underground, hard to find/detect
§ Need pigs or dogs to find truffles
• Also possible to find trufles by raking the soil everywhere
§ Destroys truffle habitat
• Pigs eat the truffles
• European red soil and rainy summers create the best truffles
§ Dogs are the most valuable
• Climate change has caused a decrease in harvest
• Organized crime
§ Truffle mafia
• The chinese used to use truffles to feed pigs, but now want to sell them to france
§ The chinese truffle is worthless
§ Chinese rake at earth with no dogs
§ Harvest truffles regardless of "ripeness"