Shiitake mushrooms showing their faces

[Gerontius]

Not sure about enoki, but you can add oyster mushroom trimmings to coffee grounds and grow from that.

It's worth trying with enoki. However, if it works, the mushrooms will be of a more traditional mushroom shape, and light brown. The enoki "long thin white" (LOL - the David Bowie mushroom) comes from intentional low air/zero light growing conditions.

Is that so? I always have coffee grounds from the percolator. Also meat is expensive and I eat a relatively low meat diet anyway. Mushrooms as a way to turn coffee grounds into food sounds fascinating...

 

[Progster]

Currently these creep people out, thanks to The Last of Us, where humans get infected by Cordyceps and become zombies. This does not happen in real life.

In Brian Aldiss's sci fi novel Hothouse, a couple of the characters are taken over by a fungus called "morel", evolved from a morchella, which controls their brain and thoughts; it can communicate and talk with them. The morchella looks a bit like a brain, so I can see where Aldiss got his inspiration from. Here, a few species of morchella grow, but they are very rare.

 

[TBRS1]

One of the largest living organisms on Earth is supposedly a fungus living in North America, Armillaria ostoyae or honey fungus, which covers an area of about 4 square miles.

That one (the biggest known) is in Oregon. Before that one was found, the largest (same genus & species) was in Michigan's upper peninsula.

Since I'm in Michigan, when the Oregon specimen was discovered I felt a lot like fans of Pluto did when Pluto was demoted from planet status to being just a big rock.

 

[TBRS1]

It's puffball mushroom, l want to grow and eat it.

I've seen cultures of the giant puff ball for sale, but it requires symbiotic soil microorganisms to fruit (produce edible mushroom). I don't think anybody has been able to fruit one in vitro (I know this because I wanted to grow one, too.)

 

[TBRS1]

Is that so? I always have coffee grounds from the percolator. Also meat is expensive and I eat a relatively low meat diet anyway. Mushrooms as a way to turn coffee grounds into food sounds fascinating...

It's very easy! Check YouTube - there's mucho info on doing this.

Mushrooms are a perfect replacement for meat. Unfortunately, they are expensive... unless you grow your own. Then, they are as cheap as garbage. Oysters grow on used coffee grounds, shredded junk mail, wet cardboard boxes, Straw/lawn clippings, compost... pretty much any bio-waste.

And they taste good, have near zero fat, have as much protein as an equal weight of meat, and all wood de-composers seem to boost the immune system.

Kindda like the perfect food, without killing sentient beings.

 

[TBRS1]

In Brian Aldiss's sci fi novel Hothouse, a couple of the characters are taken over by a fungus called "morel", evolved from a morchella, which controls their brain and thoughts; it can communicate and talk with them. The morchella looks a bit like a brain, so I can see where Aldiss got his inspiration from. Here, a few species of morchella grow, but they are very rare.
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That's the famous morel. In the early spring, the local natives (that sounds so exotic! ) comb the forest searching for these. Each family has a secret location passed down through the generations...

 

[Progster]

That's the famous morel. In the early spring, the local natives (that sounds so exotic! ) comb the forest searching for these. Each family has a secret location passed down through the generations...

I used to collect them where I live. Here, they grow on areas of land burnt in wildfires. You're lucky if you find them, though. Other edible mushrooms locally are: chantarelles, porcinis (boletus), Amanita Caesaria (Caesar's, looks like a hard boiled egg, white on the ouside and orange on the inside), portobellos, pleurotus (oyster mushrooms?), common field mushrooms, milkcaps, trumpets, green russulas, parasols.

 

[TBRS1]

Ok, now we have an actual face: