Thread: Six ways mushrooms can save the world!

Yeah, I've seen this one a while back. Really great video.

This has been in my favorites on youtube for a while now, it makes for a good watch.
I wish I had places to actually do this stuff though. Did you grow your mushrooms outdoors?

I grew them in a five gallon bucket on my porch.

Who else in here thought that this was going to be about Psilocybe?

Anyway, nice thing to watch. I was rather impressed by the petroleum remediation capability of fungi.
Mushrooms, to the beaches! GO! GO! GO!

Edit: Here's Paul Stamets's site if anybody is interested. http://www.fungi.com/

Yea, talk about a good time to intervene with the oil catastrophe..

I don't think mushrooms can grow on the ocean. But I posted a video somewhere of microbes that can clean up the oil spill in 6 weeks and turn it into food for fish and plankton/krill or whatever those little things are.

On another note: can you imagine Giant Mushrooms? I had a dream once of a mushroom planet where there were forests of giant mushrooms the size of redwood trees and the tree in Avatar. People lived in them. There were phosphorescent shrooms and psychedelic shrooms and edible shrooms and medicinal shrooms. I didn't think that it could've been this planet I dreamed of.

Originally Posted by Odd_Nonposter

Who else in here thought that this was going to be about Psilocybe?

I did. I am disappointed. But yeh, fungi are remarkable.

When he sticks to facts he's very interesting and I learnt some interesting things (I didn't know about the proposal to lump animals an fungi into a super kingdom due to similarities, or that fungi were the first organisms on land), but when he theorises he can talk a lot of nonsense.

Originally Posted by Xei

I didn't know about the proposal to lump animals an fungi into a super kingdom due to similarities

That is why they call it mushroom hunting.

Great video, The worrying thing is with the Mycilium (spelling?) is that they could attack humans? If they colonise your body. In fact arn't some conditions such as Candida, thrush, and athletes foot caused by fungi?

Originally Posted by Thatperson

Great video, The worrying thing is with the Mycilium (spelling?) is that they could attack humans? If they colonise your body. In fact arn't some conditions such as Candida, thrush, and athletes foot caused by fungi?

Nah, our body would fend it off easily. Maybe if you were dead it could infest you.

That is why they call it mushroom hunting.

It definitely isn't.

Unless you were being funny in which case I apologise for having a poor sense of humour.

I don't know about in the UK, but here in the states people who go gathering mushrooms in the forest are called mushroom hunters, and the activity is called mushroom hunting or hunting for mushrooms.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

On another note: can you imagine Giant Mushrooms? I had a dream once of a mushroom planet where there were forests of giant mushrooms the size of redwood trees and the tree in Avatar. People lived in them. There were phosphorescent shrooms and psychedelic shrooms and edible shrooms and medicinal shrooms. I didn't think that it could've been this planet I dreamed of.

Spoiler for You mean like this?!:

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

On another note: can you imagine Giant Mushrooms? I had a dream once of a mushroom planet where there were forests of giant mushrooms the size of redwood trees and the tree in Avatar. People lived in them. There were phosphorescent shrooms and psychedelic shrooms and edible shrooms and medicinal shrooms. I didn't think that it could've been this planet I dreamed of.

Spoiler for You mean like this?!:

I don't know about in the UK, but here in the states people who go gathering mushrooms in the forest are called mushroom hunters, and the activity is called mushroom hunting or hunting for mushrooms.

...yes but not because mushrooms are biologically the closest kingdom to animals, which are also hunted. :l

Rather, because 'hunting' is a word which means 'looking for something'. I could go hunting now for my keys, or certain species of tree. This isn't because keys or trees are biologically close to animals.

You have very convoluted logical thought processes...

But mushrooms ARE more closely related to animals than plants. I am not a mushroom hunter myself, but I know many, and they all know this fact, and they say that that is why they call it mushroom hunting. I am sure you are right also, there is no need for you to criticize my thought process. I just made a harmless statement.

and they say that that is why they call it mushroom hunting.

Do they? Do they really?

The fact is that mushrooms may be genetically and metabolically closer to animals but physiologically at least they are much closer to plants. For a start they can't move. They're still totally different from animals for both scientific and pragmatic purposes. I'm certain the etymology of 'hunting' is not due to some technical taxonomic idea but rather for the more obvious reason that it means 'looking for stuff'.

I agree, it probably started as an american folk idiom, due to their elusive nature. Nowadays, the idiom is continued to be used because of their closeness with animals. for example, many edibles have names of animals also: chicken of the woods, lobster mushroom, oyster mushroom, lion mushroom, etc. But even if it has nothing to do with its similarity to the animal kingdom, how does that explain the widespread use of the term "hunting" only applied to mushrooms (and animals), instead of being used for any kind of wild-crafting of plants? Type in 'mushroom picking' into wikipedia and it redirects to mushroom 'hunting'.

But physiologically, are they closer to plants? They don't photosynthesize, they take in oxygen and put out carbon dioxide, They don't have roots, stems, leaves, flowers, or seeds. They are susceptible to many of the same pathogens as animals are. The only similarity seems to be that they don't move, like coral and sponges. But these coral and sponges are 100% animals.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, what matters is that they are extremely useful and I will look into it more. Penicillin is a mold, which is a fungus. I always heard of extremist vegans who wouldn't eat bread or drink beer or wine because of the yeast being an 'animal!' That is going too far! they are NOT animals!

Yes, that's ridiculous. If you decide not to eat anything at all that has been alive, you'll die. Everything we eat is derived from life processes.

And sorry, I meant morphological, not physiological. Corals and sponges are extremely rare counterexamples; virtually every animal is motile.