Mycelium Running

Part I
 
THE MYCELIAL MIND
 
There are more species of fungi, bacteria, and protozoa in a single scoop of soil than there are species of plants and vertebrate animals in all of North America. And of these, fungi are the grand recyclers of our planet, the mycomagicians disassembling large organic molecules into simpler forms, which in turn nourish other members of the ecological community. Fungi are the interface organisms between life and death.
 
Look under any log lying on the ground and you will see fuzzy, cobweblike growths called mycelium, a fine web of cells which, in one phase of its life cycle, fruits mushrooms. This fine web of cells courses through virtually all habitats--like mycelial tsunamis--unlocking nutrient sources stored in plants and other organisms, building soils. The activities of mycelium help heal and steer ecosystems on their evolutionary path, cycling nutrients through the food chain. As land masses and mountain ranges form, successive generations of plants and animals are born, live, and die. Fungi are keystone species that create ever-thickening layers of soil, which allow future plant and animal generations to flourish. Without fungi, all ecosystems would fail.
 
With each footstep on a lawn, field, or forest floor, we walk upon these vast sentient cellular membranes. Fine cottony tufts of mycelium channel nutrients from great distances to form fast-growing mushrooms. Mycelium, constantly on the move, can travel across landscapes up to several inches a day to weave a living network over the land. But mycelium benefits our environment far beyond simply producing mushrooms for our consumption.
 
Humans collaborate with these cellular networks, using fungi, specifically using mushroom mycelium as spawn, for both short- and long-term benefits. Mushroom spawn lets us recycle garden waste, wood, and yard debris, thereby creating mycological membranes that heal habitats suffering from

Contents
 
Foreword . . . . . viii
Preface . . . . . x
Acknowledgments . . . . . xi
 
PART I  THE MYCELIAL MIND . . . . . 1
   1   Mycelium as Nature s Internet . . . . . 2
   2   The Mushroom Life Cycle . . . . . 12
   3   Mushrooms in Their Natural Habitats . . . . . 19
   4   The Medicinal Mushroom Forest . . . . . 35
 
PART II  MYCORESTORATION . . . . . 55
   5    Mycofiltration . . . . . 58
   6    Mycoforestry . . . . . 69
   7    Mycoremediation . . . . . 86
   8    Mycopesticides . . . . . 114
 
PART III  GROWING MYCELIA AND MUSHROOMS . . . . . 125
   9    Inoculation Methods: Spores, Spawn, and Stem Butts . . . . . 126
   10    Cultivating Mushrooms on Straw and Leached Cow Manure . . . . . 161
   11    Cultivating Mushrooms on Logs and Stumps . . . . . 172
   12   Gardening with Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms . . . . . 187
   13    Nutritional Properties of Mushrooms . . . . . 201
   14    Magnificent Mushrooms: The Cast of Species . . . . . 210
 
Glossary . . . . . 305
Resources . . . . . 309
Bibliography . . . . . 311
Photography and Artwork Credits . . . . . 329
Index . . . . . 330

PAUL STAMETS, founder of Fungi Perfecti (www.fungi.com), has been a dedicated mycologist for more than thirty years. He is the 1998 recipient of the Collective Heritage Institute s Bioneers Award and the 1999 recipient of the Founder of a New Northwest Award from the Pacific Rim Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils. Stamets has written five books on mushroom cultivation, use, and identification and numerous articles and scholarly papers on medicinal, culinary, and psycho-active mushrooms. His books Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms and The Mushroom Cultivator (co-author) have long been hailed as the definitive texts on mushroom cultivation.

As a physician and practitioner of integrative medicine, I find this book exciting and optimistic because it suggests new, nonharmful possibilities for solving serious problems that affect our health and the health of our environment. Paul Stamets has come up with those possibilities by observing an area of the natural world most of us have ignored. He has directed his attention to mushrooms and mycelium and has used his unique intelligence and intuition to make discoveries of great practical import. I think you will find it hard not to share the enthusiasm and passion he brings to these pages.
--From the foreword by Andrew Weil, MD, author of Eating Well for Optimum Health
 
Stamets is a visionary emissary from the fungus kingdom to our world, and the message he s brought back in this book, about the possibilities fungi hold for healing the environment, will fill you with wonder and hope.
 --Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire
 
This is the kind of book I love: highly factual and practical and mixed with the spiritual content that sets the great writers apart from all the rest.
--John Norris, former deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and founder of the Bioterrorism Institute
 
This is the first book to give the Kingdom of the Fungi its proper place in the scheme of things. It is the most important book on nature that I ve seen in years.  
--Gary Lincoff, author of National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms
 
A paradigm-changing book. Stamets s visionary insights are leading to a whole new understanding of how mushrooms, scarcely seen and rarely appreciated, regulate the earth s ecosystems.  
--John Todd, founder and president of Ocean Arks International
 
This visionary and practical book should be an instant classic in the emerging science of how to use nature s wisdom and fecundity to rescue the earth and ourselves from the unwelcome consequences