A Review of
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
by Paul Stamets
Reviewed by Terry Shistar
I have been raving about
Mycelium Running
to everyone I see these days. Perhaps the
claim that we can help “save the world” by gr
owing mushrooms will seem overstated to some
people, but Stamets makes a convincing case.
There are many ways in which
Mycelium Running
intersects with my interests. Above
all, when Stamets completes our vision of the worl
d by helping us understand the role of fungi,
even a scientist trained in a reductionist trad
ition can understand that the soil is a living
organism whose life is intertwined with the life of
the plants and animals that live in it and on
it. Fungi are essential to the ecosystem. Of co
urse, we’re all familiar with the function of fungi
as decomposers (though often not realizing how important decomposers are in digesting
“waste” and turning it into food.) But fungi also
play other roles. They feed plants and animals
directly. They form a communication sy
stem. They detoxify toxic chemicals.
Let’s go back to digesting “waste” and turnin
g it into food. The “decomposer” role in
ecosystems is one that fungi share with some insects, bacteria, earthworms, and other
organisms, which digest fecal matter and dead cells
, providing nutrients to plants. But wait a
minute, aren’t those plants and animals that I eat
dead, too? Don’t I consume, on occasion, the
fecal matter of certain yeasts (in the form of beer
or wine)? Maybe “decomposers” aren’t such a
distinct group of folks doing the dirty work on th
e planet. Maybe that’s ju
st an artificial way of
dividing up the world.
What I have found most fascinating is learning
more about this part of life in the soil.
Organic gardeners and farmers once talked ab
out “feeding the soil” instead of “allowable
inputs.” Mycorrhizal mushrooms form symbio
tic (mutually beneficial) relationships with
plants. Stamet reports on research on the sy
mbioses showing that three distinct tree species
(Douglas fir, paper birch, and western red ceda
r) shared sugars through mycorrhiza growing in
the soil, with trees in the sun giving
up nutrients to those in the shade.
Stamets has furthered this research in an a
pplied field. Having heard of traditional
interplanting of garden giants (
Stropharia rugoso annulata
) in Eastern Europe, he has begun to do
field tests to examine the symbioses between mu
shrooms and vegetables. He found that when
broccoli and brussels sprouts were mulched
with sawdust inoculated with elm oyster
mushroom spawn, the yields were 4 to 6 times t
hat of beds without the mushrooms. And there
were choice edible mushrooms, too! In addition
to the benefits of fungi that produce edible
mushrooms, inoculation of seeds with mycorrh
izal fungi helps plants gather nutrients and
prevent parasitization.
I mentioned that the book intersected many of my interests. I’m interested in wild
foods, and this book has encouraged me to hook
up with local mushroom hunters to add to my
currently small list of wild mushrooms I feel
comfortable eating—morels and puffballs.
Because it’s winter and the opportunities to lear
n mushrooms here in Kansas are largely limited
to shelflike fungi growing on trees,
Mycelium Running
has encouraged me to learn some
medicinal mushrooms that I’ll add to
my herbal medicine chest—reishi (
Ganoderma lucidum
)
and turkey tail (
Trametes versicolor
) are particularly useful, not di
fficult to identify, and fairly
common here. I am interested in restoring native plants, and Stamets’s chapter on
mycorestoration (as well as the rest of the book)
is useful in promoting
positive interactions
among plants and fungi. I suspect that encouragin
g certain fungi will help some plants that I’ve
had trouble with.
There are a few places where
Mycelium Running
is directly relevant to efforts to prevent
and eliminate the spread of toxic chemicals.
Stamets and others have been working with fungi
that feed on insects, and he has figured out a wa
y to grow fungi that delay their spore formation
and actually attract the insect to the fungus, thus
breaking through an obstacle in using fungi to
protect homes from carpenter ants and termites. However, in doing so, Stamets says his
philosophy “is not to wage war against the inse
ct kingdom but to enlist fungal allies for the
intelligent, natural, and localized control of
targeted insects .... We seek balance, not
extinction.”
Stamets also talks about the use of fungi to
detoxify toxic chemicals, and his list of
chemicals digestible by fungi includes diox
ins, organophosphates, PCBs, and many wood
preservative chemicals, including pentachlorophe
nol. He also tells how filters of mushroom
spawn can remove pathogens, nutrients, and toxins from runoff.
Finally, I want to make it clear that
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the
World
places a big emphasis on the “how”. One reason that the book is so exciting is that it has
given me the information I need to
do
things I’ve mentioned above. I can use medicinal
mushrooms. I’m looking forward to the garden
giant and elm oysters fruiting in my garden.
I’ll add some mycorrhizal spores to my potting so
ils when I start my broccoli plants this spring.
I’ve learned how to propagate mushrooms from sp
ores and stem butts and move them into the
woods, where I hope some of them will stop the spread of other fungi that have been killing oak
trees.
Maybe you can see why I’ve been raving.