12-11-2002, 07:20 PM
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Truffles and James Beard and Psilocybe mushrooms: Oh my!
(Scott Murphy) wrote in message . com...
Good point! I like "outside the box" forestry, especially when you
start to see it become "inside the box". Refresh my memory, because
its been awhile since my fungi and disease course,
I think that one statement says it all Scott. Dr. James Trappe calls
mycorrhizal fungi essential to healthy trees. He says it is easy to
find a tree in the Pacific Northwest without mycorrhizal fungi: "Look
for trees with no green." And yet even today in England, mycorrhizal
fungi inoculation of trees is considered an "infection."
but I recall
studying certain mycorrhizal fungi that acted as a go-between for
different tree species that are often associated with each other. I
think we were looking at white pine and birch; and we were tracing
radioactive isotopes through the mycorrhizal network between trees of
those two species. Kind of enforced the idea of managing for
ecological communities, not strictly stand (tree) types.
Since then some mycorrhizal fungi have also been shown to share
nutrients between Douglas-fir and Red alder. Nor is mycorrhizal
association always beneficial. Tricholoma magnivelare (matsutake) has
been recently shown to cause tree root death in some cases. And yet it
can also form beneficial mycorrhizae. Knowledge continues.
As for your prophylactics, I've a friend who has taken that up as her
undergrad thesis this year. She is using an increment bore to take
samples from different tree species and putting this into some sort of
medium in a petri dish. I think that she is trying to isolate these
fungi to innoculate both standing timber and maybe even log decks, as
these fungi are known to attack decay organisms. I love forestry...
it blows my mind, the kinds of things that are going on in the forest!
The problem with inoculating log decks is the logs are already dying
or dead. The mycorrhizal fungi that provide protection from root rots
are associated only with living trees. Still...any research into
mycorrhizal cultivation is likely going to be a positive thing (though
I don't hold much hope for mycorrhizal fungi cultivation with
non-living tissue). The most recent research strongly supports a
succession of mycorrhizal fungi with individual trees over time. But
there are darn few long-term mycological studies, and such must be
considered more anecdotal than convincing at this time.
I think you have a good founding in mycorrhizal fungi, Scott. What I'm
not sure you realize is that the field is changing so dramatically
rapidly that what you (and I) learned 10 years ago as Cantharellus
cibarius is now C. formosus; and Boletus chrysenteron is now Xercomus
chrysenteron. DNA analysis of fungi is dramatically affecting both the
variety and the systematics of the fungal world, and few people can
guess what new associations of fungi will turn up in the near future.
I'm just a simple tree grower who hopes to leave a few live trees
after I'm gone for a future generation to enjoy. When I was young,
trees 6 feet in diameter were commonplace in much of Oregon. Now they
are nearly extinct.
Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com
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