Rare mushroom sighting near Bristol spawns native fungi cloning mission – Guardian
Henry Jephson used to be wandering across the countryside near Bristol for the length of a Covid lockdown when his glance used to be caught by the ghostly appearance of a lion’s mane mushroom, its shaggy fronds putting across a tree trunk.
Jephson, the head of research on the Bristol Fungarium, knew he used to be one thing rare and particular. A staple of weak Chinese language medications, the lion’s mane will most likely be native to the UK, however is under threat. The “entirely mountainous” specimen spotted by Jephson used to be the main to be viewed in south-west England in eight years.
Shrimp did he know then that the fungus would alternate the focal level of Jephson’s work. He’s now working with Pure England and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) to score native mushrooms aid into England’s woodlands. He helps mosey a mushroom farm, which has pivoted from rising oyster and shiitake mushrooms for eating places, to conserving native fungi and rising properly being supplements from them.
Lion’s mane is so rare that it’s miles in opposition to the law to gain it from the wild, and it must be left undisturbed. Jephson used to be happy to fancy it on his walks across the farm the put he found it, happy it used to be thriving in the wild.
So he used to be shy sometime to take a examine the landowner had felled its host tree. Speaking on the Oxford Sincere Farming Conference, he stated: “The mushroom used to be smashed a long way and big the bottom in immense soggy pieces. And so discovering ourselves in a rather weird and wonderful field because they’re unlawful to gain, we picked up a indispensable lump of lion’s mane and took it aid to the mushroom farm and started making an strive to score a pleasant culture of it.”
Jephson has cloned the mushroom and is keeping its culture occurring the farm. He also spoke to the landowner, who used to be unaware of the rare nature of the fungus, and he has left the tree stump by myself, with lion’s mane aloof rising on it.
This led the fungarium down the path of keeping native mushrooms alive. “It used to be discovering the lion’s mane that basically bought us down that path of cloning rare mushrooms. And now folks were drawing shut us wanting pure traces.
“Pure England and RHS Wisley [have] rather various projects, and are using our traces to experiment. Wisley are in the bugs that feed on mushrooms, so were rising our traces at their space on logs in their backyard to music the bugs which approach.
“Pure England obtain a few traces of native mushrooms that they want to be putting into woodland. They want to notice how spores are travelling thru woodland, however also to encourage deep rot fungus. So with out a doubt mushrooms damage down various parts of the bushes, and we decide, in uncover to encourage biodiversity, to acquire mushrooms which would be true at breaking down.”
Rare fungi must no longer real at risk from unwitting landowners and their axes – there are fears that spores from industrial farms would be spreading into the wild and affecting native mushrooms.
“Mushroom farming is getting extra and further popular, which is big,” Jephson stated, “however all these industrial traces coming in, all these spores being put out in the ambiance, we real don’t know what they’re doing to native ecology.
“I used to be talking to someone at a truffle competition just a few months ago, and they were announcing they found yellow oyster mushrooms. And they started in the summertime rising on a hay bale. And yellow oysters are an weird and wonderful species. They’re real no longer endemic, it used to be in the center of nowhere.
“She didn’t know if there used to be a mushroom farm nearby, however I bet there used to be one someplace around there, and even a grow kit that someone had been rising in a windowsill, and these yellow oyster spores found their design out into the ambiance, on to a hay bale.”
Native, wild mushrooms would be better for folk’s properly being than industrial traces, Jephson stated: “The industrial traces were chosen for high yield, snappily instruct. Our mushrooms are the reverse. They’re rising in monstrous lumps. They grow incredibly slowly. They’re basically picky about conditions. But they taste amazing, and our UK stress of lion’s mane has been tested for medicinal compounds in it, and the wild clone has 30% extra beta glucans than the industrial traces.”
