Mycorrhizal Mushrooms

[FreeMan]

Irie vibrations to all

Having some fun with a mother plant I've had for around 2 years in coco so I thought I'd share with my fellow man. I inoculated this plant around a year ago with mycorrhizal fungi spores which was a mix of endomycorrhizal fungi containing the following varieties - Glomus intraradices, Glomus mosseae, Glomus aggregatum and Glomus etunicatum. I was certain the fungi had cultured well in the pot as this plant is pretty much indestructible and has dealt with a whole manner of abuse, from under/over feed/watering, severe light stress, temp fluctuations and brutal cut-backs. She always bounces back healthy as ever. Anyway, a year on and the mycelium has started to fruit, most likely due to a temperature rise in veg which has remained constant for some time. I've been casing with more coco and moistening to encourage growth the last day or two and they've most definitely appreciated the extra attention. Quite a pleasure to observe...

Before casing


After casing


Either this or I've got it horribly wrong and my whole garden is about to be infected with a killer spores. Can anyone tell me more about his mushroom? It would be an added bonus if I could put it to use in some way, maybe collect more spores to inoculated other plants?

Peace all

 

[SGMeds]

Wow... that's pretty damn cool.


Found this...

Resources for Mushroom Growers
Cultivation of Mycorrhizal Mushrooms
(Chanterelle, Matsutake etc.)

Mycorrhizal species exist in a symbiotic relationship with plants - usually trees. Without the host plant, there is no mycorrhizal mushroom. Thus, cultivation depends upon the development of a plantation of trees that the mushrooms like. Typically the seedling tree roots are inoculated with mushroom mycelia then planted. With proper management, the mushrooms appear a few years later. Efforts are underway to make mycorrhizal mushroom cultivation a economically viable venture.

* Researchers in New Zealand offer an overview of the situation with Mycorrhizal Mushrooms. (PDF - 506K)

* Reports from researchers in the U.S. and Sweden indicate that certain species of chanterelle can be made to fruit when their associated tree is only a seedling. See:
o Fruitbody Formation of the Golden Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) in the Greenhouse

* In some areas, wild matsutake are helped along by people who attempt to favorably modify their forest environment. Not much around the web about that, but there are a couple of patents related to cultivating matsutake:
o Method of Forming an Artificial Shiro of Matsutake (PDF - 76K)
o Method of Preparing Tricholoma matsutake-infected Young Pine by Co-culturing Asceptic Pine Seedlings and T. matsutake (PDF - 360K)

The Mushroom Company
PO Box 5065
Klamath Falls, OR 97601 USA
©2009-2010 The Mushroom Company | A Global Creations website

 

[FreeMan]

Thanks SG, I was just looking at that site too but couldn't make out exactly what their motivation for cultivating the mushroom was. Edible maybe? I'll dig a little deeper.

 

[SGMeds]

I got on a tangent... tried to identify the species... this might take a while! lmao


Closest thing I could find so far is something like...



Leucocoprinus birnbaumii



Found this site, which is interesting...

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/leucocoprinus_birnbaumii.html



lmao... it's 3am & i'm looking for shrooms! used to do it a little different back in hs though... ;-)

 

[FreeMan]

I got on a tangent... tried to identify the species... this might take a while! lmao


Closest thing I could find so far is something like...



Leucocoprinus birnbaumii



Found this site, which is interesting...

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/leucocoprinus_birnbaumii.html



lmao... it's 3am & i'm looking for shrooms! used to do it a little different back in hs though... ;-)

Looks like it could be the same thing for sure. These things are getting bigger by the hour.

Forgot to add that this plant hasn't had any special treatment in particular. Just Sensi A+B and PH down with tap water it's whole life.

It's funny how shroom hunting changes over the years. I remember a time when mushrooms seemed to be finding me.

Thanks for the link

 

[FreeMan]

More pics...

 

[FreeMan]

Mushrooms opening up

 

[SGMeds]

Dude~ that's just crazy! So very quickly...

What ya going to do... let em spore out???

 

[Apache123]

I have read where certain mushrooms have a synergistic effect with Plants. Check Paul Stamets Site http://www.fungi.com/ I have read a book of his and its awesome!

Check out his TED talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html

 

[gaiusmarius]

wow that's just amazing, i never saw more then like 1 or 2 small ones, mostly just some fungus growing on the coco. never such a development of real mushrooms. i have no idea if you can do anything with them.

 

[FreeMan]

Thanks for the link and the responses, I'm having a lot of fun watching these amazing lifeforms do their things. The cups are fully open on the larger mushrooms now, so I'm assuming they will have already shed most their spores. Some are starting to up-turn similar to Amanita Muscaria.

Here's the progress since yesterday.

 

[nvthis]

Yeah man, I would yank those out.. Not sure what they are (they could be a coprinus as the margins are heavily striate, but coprinus won't usually open up like that but will stay more conical in shape..) but the last thing you want is some wood rotter running rampant in your roots. Amanitas (i.e. Muscaria) will present white gills and a universal veil which will make it look like it is growing out of a cup (and will have come up looking like a 'cottony' egg).

 

[Tactical Farmer]

Pretty cool stuff - Here is a thread that has some related info: http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=3711905#post3711905

IMO - would leave them alone

 

[green_thumb...]

are those edible? iv tried this with cubensis but it didnt work. looks neat tho,have you been on the shroomery?

 

[FreeMan]

Thanks for thread link Tactical, I'll give that a read when I get a sec. I'm pretty sure they are from the beneficial fungi so I am going to let them fruit out. It should stop anyway once I've sorted the temps, but I'm wondering how many flushes this culture will produce if environmental factors remain constant? I was going to ditch this plant but she might just have a permanent place if I can somehow harvest the spore mass to inoculate other mothers.

 

[FreeMan]

are those edible? iv tried this with cubensis but it didnt work. looks neat tho,have you been on the shroomery?

I'm not certain GT, but I read a post that some other guy ate them blind to find out. Not sure if they were any good taste wise, I think he was aiming for something that blurred the edges a little more He lived to tell the tale anyway. I hadn't tried shroomery, thanks for the reminder.

 

[ShroomDr]

please dont eat them. Unknown mushrooms should never be consumed, as many produce deadly toxins. Some mushrooms are notoriously hard to identify, going as far as needing a microscope to look at the spores. DO NOT EAT UNKNOWN MUSHROOMS IF YOU LIKE HAVING YOUR LIVER AND KIDNEYS.

These discussed in this thread are basically harmless; i was getting them about 3 months ago, i attributed them to either 'EA/EN' or more likely 'Plant Success Granular'.

Those caps formed almost perfectly, which probably means your rH is perfect (for shrooms, not MJ, its too high). I would add a fan too.

You can remove the mushrooms, but you are only removing the fruiting bodies not the mycelium (essentially mushroom vegetation+roots). The mycelium certainly is not detrimental, but the conditions they fruit under are not exactly ideal for MJ (and its wasting energy fruiting).

My signature has a link to the shroomery

 

[FreeMan]

Thanks for all the help everyone, mushroom has been identified by FungiPerfecti.com, home of Paul Stamets. Here's the link they sent me... apparently no problem having it around, just not edible.

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/leucocoprinus_birnbaumii.html

 

[ShroomDr]

You should give them permission to use your photo, because you have a better fruit set than any of their images. Yours might be too prolific for them!

If you dont mind me asking, what is in your substrate? Did you inoculate with mycorrhiza, do you supplement carbs, reuse your substrate, or have some crazy mix? rH, temp, Air Circulation?

 

[FreeMan]

No problem ShroomDr, the substrate is Bio-Nova bricked coco, first run with perlite added, nothing else apart from the MycoGrow ectomycorrhizal spores and Advanced Sensi Grow. Temps in veg are high at the moment, 85, even higher some days. Humidity is constant around 40%, air flow is fine, extraction, oscillator and passive intake facilitating movement. Must have been ideal conditions for the fruiting.