“The mushroom is the‘fruiting body’of a subterranean network of microscopic hyphae, improbably long root like cells that thread themselves through the soil like neurons. Bunched like cables, the hyphae form webs of (still microscopic mycelium."[2] We don’t know how fungi propagate—the same kind may take three years or thirty years to appear. It may well be impossible to ever visually study “its structure because its mycelia are to tiny and delicate to tease from the soil without disintegrating."[3] Mushrooms arise from nowhere without, as my grandmother liked to say, “rhyme or reason.” In Michigan, one was found that covered forty acres and was over a century old.
All mushrooms are considered to be fungi. Unlike plants, they lack chlorophyll and, therefore, cannot manufacture their food energy from the sun. They are like animals in that they feed on organic matter. And, unlike either plants or animals, the mushroom contains no calories (which is energy derived from the sun and the measure most commonly used by nutritionists). Mushrooms actually do not like and will wither in too much sunlight. Some researchers speculate that mushrooms contain a huge amount of lunar rather than solar energy.
Blue Oysters mushrooms grow easily on a wide range of substrates and are good candidates for recycling wood and paper waste into edible mushrooms.[4] Most recently, they have found use in cleaning up hazardous and toxic petrochemical spills. About a pound of Blue Oyster mushrooms can devour a mass of petrochemical sludge and within two weeks covert the mass to edible protein molecules.[5]
Above all else, fungi such as mushrooms are what keep the earth alive. Without them "the dead would pile up without end, the carbon cycle would cease to function, and living things would end up without things to eat . . . They stand on the threshold between the living and the dead."[6]
See a video of the Blue Oyster mushroom at the following web link:
(http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=blue+oyster&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#q=blue+oyster+mushroom&hl=en&emb=0)
[1] For a brief introduction and specific studies go on-line to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnetism
[2] Pollan, Michael, The Omnivore’s Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals,
Penquin Press, 2006, page 174. On-line at”
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural ... - Google Book Search”.
[4] Sporworks.com http://sporeworks.com/store/product.php?productid=16146
[5] Using a combination of hair, which naturally absorbs oil from air and water and actsas a sponge for an oil slick was cleaned up when 1,000 spongy hairmats the size of a doormat were used to soaked up the oily black gunk. 10,000 oyster mushrooms were divided among and on the mats. In less than 12 weeks they converted the oily hair mats into nontoxic compost. Pictures and commentary at
Inhabitat » CLEANING UP AN OIL SPILL WITH HAIR AND MUSHROOMS?
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