How long have mushrooms been on Earth? This is a difficult question. Fossils of microscopic aquatic fungi over 545 million years old have been found in northern Russia. In 1910, at Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, a fungal fossil, perhaps associated with cyanobacterium lichen, was uncovered in red sandstone four hundred million years old. These Prototaxites reached heights of nearly thirty feet, and were driven to extinction by either animal grazing or competition from vascular plants.
Mushroom fruiting bodies, similar to modern forms, have been found preserved in amber ninety million years old. Four fossil agarics have been found in amber in the Dominican Republic that are estimated to be fifteen to twenty million years old. A recent discovery from Burma shows an ancient mushroom in amber attacking a parasite that is attacking the fungi.
The number of species in the kingdom Fungi is estimated at 1.4 million species. (It is estimated that the Pacific Northwest region alone contains fifteen to twenty thousand species.) Only eighty thousand have been named, and of the fourteen thousand well-known species only about 50 percent are considered to be edible to any degree. About two thousand are safe edibles, with more than seven hundred species possessing significant pharmacological properties.
“Mushroom” is believed to derive from the French word mousseron, as they grow amongst moss (mousse). Some authors assume that mousseron actually refers to a fly-killing fungus or moucheron (mouche means “fly”). More likely it is from the Old English maes, “a field,” and rhum, meaning “a knob.” Although some scholars believe it stems from the Gaelic maesrhin, this has not been documented.
One derivation of the word “fungus” is from the Latin funus, meaning “a corpse,” and ago meaning “I make,” indicating that the Romans were well aware of the potential danger (and had a good sense of humor). Dioscorides summed it up nicely: “Either they are edible or they are poisonous.” Other authors believe it derives from the Greek spoggos, meaning “sponge.”
Mushrooms have been prized all over the world. The oldest recorded history of mushroom use is a Tassali image from an Algerian cave dating back to 5000 BCE. The mushroom is surrounded with electrified auras outlining a dancing shaman. Ancient Indian, Greek, and Roman myths also suggested that mushrooms sprang from lightning, and in Mexico, the fungi are actually sacred because they are thought to result from the sexual union of a bolt of lightning and Earth.
The ancient Romans feasted on mushrooms; Martial wrote in the first century AD, “It is easy to refuse gold and silver or even attractive ladies, but to refuse mushrooms is difficult.” The Romans set aside special silver vessels called boletaria to hold and cook mushrooms, and amber knives were reserved for their preparation. Martial also wrote that “gold and silver and dresses may be trusted to a messenger, but not a boletus, because it will be eaten on the way.”
Nicandros, a Greek physician of the second century BC, taught mushroom cultivation. Both the Greeks and Romans cultivated Agrocybe aegerita, which grows on poplar, “the people’s tree.”
The Greeks, according to Suetonius, called fungi the “food of the gods,” while the Greek philosopher Porphyry called them “sons of the gods,” as they were born without seed. In Corinth, humans were believed to have been born from mushrooms.
Avicenna, the famous tenth-century Arabian physician, warned that toadstools green, black, and the color of peacocks were poisonous.
The Chinese have a rich history of fungal interest, dating back some seven thousand years to the Yang Shao culture. The Mycoflora, by Chen Jen-yu, written in 1245 AD, was devoted entirely to the development, appearance, harvest, and preparation of eleven species of fungi.
The oldest written record of mushrooms as medicine is an Indian medical treatise from 3000 BC.
In German mythology, on one winter’s night, the god Wotan rides through the forest on horseback, pursued by devils. As the horse races faster and faster, blood-specked foam falls from the mouth, producing next spring’s beautiful red mushrooms with white specks.
English herbalists called poisonous mushrooms tode stoles; tode from the German word meaning “death.” This developed into the common name “toadstools” because of the association of the common toad with witchcraft.
Albertus Magnus, in the thirteenth century, said that mushrooms are not really plants but excrescents of earth and plants. “That is why they are generally brittle and owe their poisonous nature to the rotting dampness on which they grow.” And thus, for centuries, mushrooms were considered to be the result of decomposition, not the cause. Caesalpinius, the director of the Botanical Gardens in Pisa, Italy, wrote in 1583 that fungi were fruit.
Gerard, the famous English herbalist, did not like mushrooms, leading to the English mycophobia now present in much of North America. This fear did not extend to all Europeans, mind you, as various fungi appear on eighteen coats of arms. Ten are from France, three from Germany, and one each from England, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Poland.
The Russians have a rich and versatile tradition of mushroom feasting, and call their gathering expeditions “the third hunt.” An old Russian proverb says, “If you think you are a mushroom, jump into the basket.”
In Finland, the estimated wild mushroom crop on a good year is five billion kilograms. This follows a government policy, in effect since World War II, to encourage wild harvesting. Slogans about the millions of marks rotting in Finnish forests have helped encourage the industry, as have more than three thousand trained “natural product advisors” who provide advice to commercial mushroom pickers and lead expeditions for those who collect as a hobby. More than fifty thousand pickers were trained between 1969 and 1983, so that by 1979 an estimated 72 percent of Finnish adults were picking mushrooms.
Wild mushrooms were an important foodstuff in wartime. A Russian proverb—“when mushrooms abound, there’ll be war around,”—suggests survival rations.
In Lausanne, Switzerland, no fewer than seventy-eight kinds of officially sanctioned fungi are sold in the markets. Certain mushrooms, like the chanterelle, are sold by volume to avoid water soaking to increase their weight; and boletes are cut in half to expose the amount of insect larvae.
In Stockholm, more than three hundred species are permitted in the markets, but in Munich, the largest market for wild fungi, only about thirty species are for sale, largely composed of cepes (Boletus edulis).
In 1927, the French set up a National Inspectorate to ensure the safety of wild fungi. These experts can be found throughout rural France, in town halls or pharmacies, advising edibility and market prices.
In the former Czechoslovakia, government regulations governing the sale were published in 1950, with sixty-four species on the approved list, plus nine Russulas that may be used for making mushroom extracts.
Wild mushroom picking is also profitable. A 1993 survey of 10,400 pickers in the Western United States indicate they harvested around four million pounds of wild mushrooms. Morels, chanterelles, and boletes accounted for two-thirds of the take. The matsutake, or pine mushroom (Tricholoma magnivelare), harvest was 836,000 pounds, with the whole gross value conservatively estimated at $41 million.
British Columbia leads the export of mushroom harvests in Canada, with most of the product exported to Japan, Europe, and the United States. Seven companies control 90 percent of this export market at the present time.
Today, a wide variety of mushrooms are being cultivated, other than those already available in the grocery store, such as button, enoki, shiitake, and oyster.
Coprinus comatus, Armillaria mellea, Craterullus cornucopioides, and Kuehneromyces mutabilis are additional proven cultivars.
It is estimated that approximately 50 percent of the annual five million metric tons of cultivated edible mushrooms contain functional, medicinal, or nutraceutical properties. The total value of worldwide mushroom production from 1989 to 1991 was about U.S. $7.5 billion. By 2001, the world value of mushroom production (10.32 million metric tons of food plus medicinal mushrooms) was estimated at U.S. $21 billion, the same value as coffee production.
By 1994, medicinal mushrooms were U.S. $2 billion in sales worldwide, and by 1997 had risen to U.S. $3.2 billion or 60 percent in just three years; and $4.5 billion by 1999.
In 2000, the estimated sales of reishi mushrooms alone were U.S. $2.1 billion.
In descending tonnage, the most popular food mushrooms after button are shiitake, oyster (Pleurotus), mu-er (Auricularia), enoki (Flammulina), yin-er (Tremella), hedgehog (Hericium), and maitake (Grifola). They all have various degrees of immune-modulating, lipid-lowering, antitumor, and other therapeutic health properties.
The successful cultivation of Pleurotus pulmonarius on water hyacinth and Lentinula edodes on coffee wastes will help increase oyster mushroom production.
Sunflower seed hulls can be utilized as a substrate for mushroom production. In 1999, world production of this waste product was 14,073 thousand metric tons, a considerable resource.
Dr. S. T. Chang, director of the Research Center for Food Protein at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that “when one considers that they can be produced on waste materials—converting products of little or no market value into food for an over-populated world—then there is no doubt that mushrooms represent one of the world’s greatest untapped resources of nutritious and palatable food for the future.” Not to mention health and wellness!
There are more than 270 identified fungal species with known therapeutic properties. These include antioxidants, hypotensives, hypocholesterolemics, liver protectants, anti-fibrotics, as well as anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, antiviral, and antimicrobial properties.
Other medicinal properties derived from fungi include immunosuppressants used in organ transplants and as adjuncts to cancer chemotherapy and radiation.
Mushrooms contain bioactive metabolites capable of helping revitalize and modulate our immune systems. These biological response modifiers help activate macrophages and T-cells and produce cytokines, including interleukins as well as tumor necrosis factors (TNF). Medicinal mushrooms may hold the key to much disease and chronic illness on our planet. The Fungal Pharmacy may one day become a reality.
Common to every medicinal mushroom is beta-D-glucan, a polysaccharide. Polysaccharides are long sugar chains with oxygen-bearing molecules; in the process of breakdown, this oxygen is released and made available at a cellular level. Polysaccharides are poorly digested and may be acted upon by intestinal bacteria to release oligosaccharides. The main immunological activity is believed to be due to the interaction of the oligosaccharides with gut-associated lymphoid tissue. Immune cells associated with GALT, activated by beta-glucans in the gut, may migrate to other tissue and thereby exert immune-modulating activity. Beta-glucans stimulate interferon, interleukins, TNF, NK, B- and T-lymphocytes, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, lymphokine-activated killer cells, macrophages, granulocytes in bone marrow, and production of platelets in bone marrow. Beta-glucans also attach themselves to the receptor sites on the immune cells and activate them, allowing them to recognize cancer cells as “foreign” and create a higher level of response.
We know that dectin-1, on macrophages, is a receptor that mediates beta-glucan activation of phagocytosis and production of cytokines, an action coordinated by the toll-like receptor-2.
Activated complement receptors on natural killer cells, neutrophils, and lymphocytes are associated with tumor cytotoxicity. Scavenger and lactosyl-ceramide bind beta-glucans and mediate a sequence of pathways leading to immune activation.
TNF is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that activates nuclear factor-kB (NFkappaB) and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). NFkappaB is anti-apoptotic, and JNK contributes to cell death. In cancer, TNF is a double-edged sword. It can be an endogenous tumor-promoter, because TNF stimulates the growth, proliferation, invasion and metastasis, and tumor angiogenesis of cancer cells. On the other hand, TNF is also a cancer-killer, and mushrooms appear to sensitize cancer cells to TNF-induced apoptosis by inhibiting NFkappaB, etc.
In an interview, Paul Stamets explained, “Mushrooms don’t like to rot, so they produce natural antibiotics. The mycelium produces these sweats of enzymes, and in these sweats are very potent antibiotics that are antiviral, antibacterial, antiprotozoal, and antifungal.” Suzanne McNeary of the marketing firm Tradeworks (quote in Madley 2001) explains further, “The mushroom acquires food outside its cells. During the … mycelical stage … digestive enzymes are excreted to digest the food outside the cells. Since the mushroom needs to absorb the digested food, it must first deactivate any natural pathogens. The mushroom is also uniquely proficient at expelling undesirable chemicals and contaminants absorbed during the ingestion. Hence, in order for the mushroom to survive and thrive it must possess a remarkably aggressive, proactive, and protective immune system.”
One study has shown that post-menopausal women eating mushrooms received more breast cancer protection than women who were still ovulating (S. A. Hong et al. 2008). Sonolight Pharmaceuticals, a company with roots in the University of Alberta, has also conducted research into the use of compounds derived from a bamboo mushroom for use in breast cancer therapy.
Mushrooms can be used medicinally in the form of homeopathy and essences. The former is based upon the use of mother tinctures (one part fungi to one part alcohol or water) and subsequent triturations or dilutions of these in water. This type of healing, based on the work of Samuel Hahnemann, is based on the idea of “similar cures similar” and that symptoms provoked by large material doses are remedied by small, dilute ingestion. Fungal essences are loosely based on the work of Dr. Edward Bach, an English physician who first produced flower essences nearly a century ago. Fungal essences are considered “vibrational medicine,” and work on various mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a person’s health.
The use of mushrooms in animal health medicine, both for pets and livestock, is a growing market. A recent project in British Columbia found shiitake extracts improved the effects of vaccination in farmed salmon (Nikl et al. 1991, 7). Another study found that mushroom extracts helped protect carp from bacterial infections (Yano et al. 1991). A recent phase-one study by Duane Barker and John Holliday (2010) looked at optimal amounts of Fin-Immune™, a proprietary mixture of medicinal mushrooms, on rainbow trout.
Fungi may be a source of biological fuel cells of the future. Yeasts, growing in sugar, are capable of raising or lowering an electronic charge. By connecting six biological cells in a series and using carbon electrodes, M. C. Potter, in 1911, developed the first man-made “living battery,” which gave a current of 1.25 milliamperes. He went on to show the enzymes invertase and diastase are capable of making electricity. A biochemical fuel cell, developed by Dr. Frederick Sisler, has been operating in his laboratory for several months. A Navy project known as “BEEP” (Biological Energy Production) is researching fuel cells based on yeast, algae, bacteria, and enzymes. Microbial electric cells for operating lights, radio receivers, and transmitters have been designed.
An unusual use of fungi is as a dye for wool. To use dry fungi as a dye, simmer with an equal amount of wool by weight for up to one hour in water no hotter than 194 degrees Fahrenheit. In many cases, these dyes are capable of fixing effectively without the use of mordants. Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper Pigments and Myco-stix™, by Miriam C. Rice, is a thorough examination of this application.
Mycoremediation is a process that uses fungi to help reduce toxic materials presently relegated to disposal facilities, decontaminate and minimize road and farm runoff, create buffer zones, reduce agricultural waste, reduce pollution in watersheds, reduce forest fire potential, and clean up contaminated bacterium such as Escherichia coli and other pathogenic microbes. The methods are safe and economical, reduce unpleasant odors, and result in clean soil and water. Macrofungi help degrade contaminants into nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen, giving a viable alternative for remediation of agricultural chemicals, petroleum by-products, pesticides, and other industrial and pharmaceutical wastes.
Dr. Janusz Zwiazek at the University of Alberta is looking at fungi-protected trees and seedlings and their resistance to salt damage. The findings of that work could help mycoremediate the oil sands tailings in the Fort McMurray area of northern Alberta. For more information on mycoremediation, I recommend the excellent book Mycoremediation: Fungal Bioremediation by Harbhajan Singh, which contains nearly two thousand references related to this growing field.
Several myths exist regarding differentiation of edible and toxic fungi. As recently as the 1950s, it was believed that a silver spoon used to stir cooking mushrooms would discolor in the presence of toxins. Others believed that a sprinkling of salt would turn poisonous specimens black. Earlier “wisdom” suggested that a mushroom collected while the sun shone on them was bad, or that mushrooms, once seen by human eyes, will stop growing.
An old English rhyme reflects the fungiphobia and misinformation of fungal toxicity:
When the moon is at the full
Mushrooms you may freely pull.
But when the moon is on the wane
Wait ere you think to pluck again.
On the other hand, wild mushrooms are an edible delight, and in their prime they are remarkably tasty and satisfying. Be alert, sensible, and enjoy.
I am a mushroom, on whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.
—JOHN FORD
Modern literature, films, and musical compositions make use of fungi to create unearthly or mystical settings. Flying amanitas both grow and shrink in the Disney animated film Fantasia. In a Mickey Mouse short film, the hero’s home is uprooted by sprouting toadstools. In Peter Pan, the nefarious Captain Hook “sat down on one of the enormous forest mushrooms, [for] in Never-Never Land, mushrooms grow to gigantic size.” The Smurfs live in mushroom cottages, and mushrooms are one of the favorite foods of Hobbits.
Video games also make great use of mushrooms. “Super Mario” fans will recognize the mushroom that can make them big or small, inspired, according to originator Shigeru Miyamoto, by Alice in Wonderland.
The Purple Pileus, by H. G. Wells, is about a mushroom that changes the course of a man’s life. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne included giant subterranean mushrooms. Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham have written science fiction stories featuring frightening fungi. Other great books featuring mushrooms include I Is for Innocent, by Sue Grafton; Acceptable Risk, by Robin Cook; The Flounder, by Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass, and Mr. Bass’s Planetoid, by Eleanor Cameron.
At the young age of twenty-two, Igor Stravinsky composed a six-minute song for voice and piano called “The Mushrooms Going To War.” First performed in 1904, this song tells the story of a pine mushroom (Borovik) who calls up various mushroom troops to arms. But each group claims entitlement to exemption, with the golden chanterelle (Opionki) objecting that they are too frail, with slender legs, and the wrinkled morels (Smorchki) too old.
A Czech composer, Vaclav Halek, has written some 1,650 musical compositions inspired by distinct varieties of mushroom. The sixty-seven-year-old picks fungi and hears music. “I know that each mushroom has its own special melody,” he says. A book and CD called The Musical Atlas of Mushrooms, containing forty of his compositions, is available from www.fontana.ws.
In the rock musical The Pick of Destiny, Jack Black’s song “Papagenu (He’s My Sassafrass)” is inspired by mushrooms.
• It is mentioned that to dream of mushrooms denotes fleeting happiness, but to dream that you are gathering them suggests fickleness in a lover or consort.
• First Nations, such as the Thompson of British Columbia, bathed new babies in mushroom infusions to make them strong and independent, since fungi were considered so powerful.
• Curiously, fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants, meaning they are closer to the people who eat them than they are to the dead wood on which they live.
• Mushrooms come in all sizes, from microscopic to giant; one wild mushroom found in France some years back measured fifty feet in circumference and weighed 108 pounds.
• Mushrooms are powerful, some able to lift heavy rocks and even break through cement sidewalks. Fruiting bodies have cells that stretch and act like tiny hydraulic rams creating slow, steady pressure. They have moved through three-inch-thick asphalt, lifted wine casks off a cellar floor, and broken through concrete floors in factories. In England, a stone slab weighing thirty-seven kilograms (about eighty-one pounds) was lifted two inches off the ground by two small meadow mushrooms, which were found balancing the stone in the center.
• Two Italian mycologists heard a loud noise like an exploding firecracker coming from a portico that faced their courtyard. The concrete floor split and rose in the air, revealing several compact agaric mushrooms in the floor opening. Impressive indeed!