mycological characteristics

Kottke informs that the variety of mushrooms that certain dishes and culinary presentation calls for—and what we are readily willing to pay a premium for—are the same species of fungus but harvested at different points of maturity. The portobello mushroom is no different than dime-a-dozen button mushrooms, just with a better P-R agent. It makes me think of the great baby-carrot fraud, which are just the whittlings off of club-sized carrots that would not be seemly for the produce-aisle.

garden switchboard

For more than a century, botanists have known about the symbiotic partnership between fungi and plants—the networks of fungal mycelium bundled with the roots of shrubs and trees described as a “mycorrhiza” association that is mutually beneficial in helping the other extract certain nutrients from the soil. What researchers are just discovering, however, is the breadth and depth of those connections and the nature of that relationship that’s akin to a subterranean vegetable information superhighway: the long tendrils of the fungal mycelia link individual plants in myriad ways and are the lines of transmission for chemical signals through garden plots and whole forests.
In a fascinating overview from BBC Earth magazine’s archive, featured recently on Dave Log 3.0, ecologists examine how this fungal internet allows plants over great distances to not only warm one other of intruders, it facilitates the sharing of nutrients and even allows the older generations to aid new spouts with sustenance, sabotage of unwanted neighbours and even parasitic behaviours. I feel a little guilty for my potted companions now, who might feel essential restricted to solitary confinement. I suspect, however, there are other modes of plant communication. After seeing more devastating wildfires for Australia in the headlines, I learnt that not only are the eucalyptus trees evolved to be explosively flammable—not unlike the strange venomousness given to everything there—and many of the seeds of other trees will not germinate without a periodic scorched-earth policy (or alternatively, arson by self-immolation), further prior to the settlement of Europeans, the stretches of eucalyptus forest that are a familiar sight today did not exist. The Aborigines, who had been landscape artists for tens of thousands of years, were careful cultivators and kept the forests pruned back, favouring grasslands that acted as fire-breaks and foraging grounds for game. It seems the Aborigines knew the risk of letting Nature run its favoured course, and that begs the question: what is Australia’s (or any land’s) natural state—wild or tamed, either by exception or by tradition?

fungiculture

Spargelzeit (Asparagus season) with all its fanfare and focus is a distant memory by now but one up-side to the change of seasons and the cool and damp days ahead is the advent of Mushroom Time. Pfifferlinge, a savoury scalloped fungus found on tree trunks, is my favourite—celebrated with just as much intensity, and while any foraging for these gourmet delicacies, such work is best left to seasoned experts, many keeping the faithful locations of the appearance of this heritage fruiting a secret guarded as well as that for a prized vintner, since there are many more varieties that are deadly poisonous than edible. This time of year, many restaurants adjust their menus—Tageskarte, Speisekarte—to showcase this time-honoured mania.

1up or der glückspilz

This vintage German New Year’s greeting card is just exuding good fortune with all the lucky paraphernalia featured, the greeter riding a pig jumping over a stand of mushrooms (Glückspilze) and armed with a horseshoe and four-leaved clovers. About the only talisman, at least in German traditions, not shown is a chimney sweep (Kaminkehrer). I am just as curious as to why this profession and not butcher, baker or candlestick maker is considered auspicious, but what strikes me first is how the chimney sweep comes bearing the same toadstool.  Deconstructing the symbols of luck is a bigger challenge than the turns and transpositions of holiday customs, and it is remarkable how many ways the inscrutable language of fortune infiltrates culture, yet remaining humble in its portrayal like this archetypal mushroom—everyone’s generic idea of what a mushroom should look like but having strange powers and a mysterious past. The Caterpillar from Alice’s adventures through the looking-glass holds court from such a tuffet, the Brothers Mario gain size and power from these bonuses, the Smurfs (les schtroumpfs, die Schlümpfe) lived in such mushroom houses—not to mention a staple in fairytales. A mushroom rendered in such a universally distinctive way can only be the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), a poisonous and unpredictably psychotropic fungus, which surely caused some fretful parents to condemn the Smurfs (and their underwater counterparts, the Snorks) as promoting drug use, like the same concerned group thought that the Care Bears were a satanic gateway organization, and although the mushroom grows anywhere that pine trees grow, it was considered highly dangerous to ingest (although most drugs I think are unpredictable) and there is only evidence in use in the far eastern reaches of Russia, restricted to the shaman caste or religious purposes.
I wonder how such an exclusive yet ubiquitous substance was translated to some universally hoped for but escapingly rare commodity as providence. It is strange what can develope in abject isolation.  It’s no explanation, but the luckiness of the chimney sweep, who introduced industrial cancer and labour reform to the world besides, seem to operate under a similar logic—a reminder that one’s hearth and home had not burnt down, due to a poorly maintained fireplace, but still representing a kind of forbidden and untouchable skill, like for those who live in psychedelic houses.