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An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

bbc.com

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Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#31

Post by HelloMcFly »

voidUpdate wrote: post #11
abcd_f wrote: post #4

The good news is that's edible and apparently tastes good.

Same with Kudzu, and apparently that's an unstoppable plant too

Kudzu's threat has been long overstated. It thrives especially near forest edgelands which are always visible on highways, so concern of prevalence was partially based on individual sampling error. In reality, its presence in southern forests is higher than desired but still not disastrous (~0.1% of southern forestland), which is a fraction of worse invasives: Japanese honeysuckle (4.4%) and Asian privet (1.4%).

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#32

Post by genthree »

endgame wrote: post #21
comrade1234 wrote: post #10

A company grows these (and other mushrooms) in a warehouse here in Zurich to supply restaurants and grocery stores, which is probably one of the reasons these mushrooms are now found in the wild. I "hunt" (in German you use the verb "collect/gather") mushrooms in the forests around Zurich and I haven't seen these yet. They also don't appear in my Pilzfürher app specific to Switzerland. But I have heard they are here.…

The verb I've most commonly heard for this activity in English is "forage". What's the equivalent German word?

"Mushroom hunting" is a fairly common phrase in English, too. It appears to have the top-level title for the page about that activity, on Wikipedia, even (mushroom foraging, mushroom picking, and mushrooming are all given as alternative terms)

Plus it's the title of a song on the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, so it has that going for it.

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#33

Post by throwway120385 »

abcd_f wrote: post #4

The good news is that's edible and apparently tastes good.

The Himalayan Blackberry produces untold numbers of very large fruits and it's still so aggressive you have to ruthlessly clear it before it grows under your foundations and into your driveway and walls. It takes over every patch of ground it gets access to and it will send runners down 20 or 30 foot concrete walls from the top of the freeway. I once saw it grow a runner up to the top of a 40-foot tree and then back down to the ground 10 feet away. The thorns are so thick it will penetrate everything but duck cotton. I have to wear welding gloves when I'm clearing it because it can go right through gardening gloves. It is a hell plant sent to torment us for our hubris.

If you've ever bought or eaten "marionberry" this plant is where it grows.

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#34

Post by ux266478 »

3yr-i-frew-up wrote: post #27
Pine_Mushroom wrote: post #8

I had a mushroom farm in Northern Michigan some years ago and we grew Golden Oysters, among other species. I think our winters are too cold for them to really establish themselves, but I was hearing reports of them 'going native' in Southern Michigan as long ago as 15 years. Like the farmer in the article, I also wondered about the apparent lack of effort in growing native species. My area has a wonderful native oyst…

I've been thinking about farming in Michigan. If global warming takes off, we should have a nice environment and plenty of water to grow... I just can't imagine doing agriculture in 2026. I have a masters in Mechanical Engineering and 2 decades of experience. It just seems like something for uneducated people.

Why do you think that?

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#35

Post by ux266478 »

u8080 wrote: post #20
ssm008 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apply wolves!

If they became unstoppable, we'll need unstoppable humans! Wait~~

We must continue this chain until we reach unstoppable sapient topological "aberrations" in space-time with reversed arrows of time.

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#36

Post by doodlebugging »

jsmo wrote: post #3

TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus_citrinopileatus

The iNaturalist.org map tab could help you determine whether it has been found in your area. [0]

I was hoping it had not made it to Texas since it was reported mostly in the NE US but it looks like some people have started cultivating it here and it may have escaped cultivation sometime during the last few years.

Considering that it is an invasive fungus that is known to degrade all the natives in the area it should be no surprise that the questions about whether the fungus was found growing on a grow block are rarely or never answered in the Texas reports. This could be due to the questions being asked by researchers trying to identify spread mechanisms from posts that are several years old. The original poster may not respond either because they don't remember or they are not as active as they used to be.

I think there are 8 reports in the state today and at least one is obviously in a grow medium of sawdust. [1] The fact that people placed most of their sitings on parks instead of home gardens when more than one case clearly shows a residential setting may suggest that they are growing something that they know can escape but they would like others to think they found it in the wild so it isn't their problem.

I have a great natural environment for them with several live oak widowmakers standing dead for around 25 years. I have not seen any yellow mushrooms though, yet. I think the native mulch industry in Texas will probably be their main spread vector since hardwoods are mulched locally and sold all over the state. As far as I know there are fewer restrictions on mulch sales from infected areas than there are on firewood sales across county lines. I think mulch may incorrectly be classified as compost in this case where the assumption is that there has been large scale degradation sterilization of weed seeds, fungal spores, etc due to decomposition temperatures.

[0]https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/504060-Pleurotus-citrinopil...

[1]https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/163199817

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#37

Post by close04 »

I often read about invasive species from a Western point of view and some of the most aggressive and hard to keep under control species come from Asia. Is the Asian ecosystem equally invaded by Western species? Are forests, gardens, or lakes in Asia overrun by European carp and grey oyster mushrooms? Or is there something about the environment and ecosystem in Asia that makes those species uniquely invasive and resistant?

For example the Japanese knotweed evolved to grow on the side of volcanoes and survive the occasional lava flow. It's a uniquely harsh environment which prepares it for thriving in any "gentle" garden in the world. But the mushrooms didn't evolve in any particularly bad environment, so why are these species outcompeting local ones? Why are they so fit for a new environment?

I know I have some selection and survivorship bias because I only know of the species that made it, not the ones which try to invade and fail so that's why I'm curious if this is a special situation, or more or less expected because a known percentage of species from any part of the world end up outcompeting local species from another.

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#38

Post by voidUpdate »

yorwba wrote: post #30
voidUpdate wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to tell the japanese and vietnamese that it doesn't taste good then, they seem to have been using it as food for quite a while now

The root, not the leaves.

Well it's lucky I didn't say anything about the leaves then

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#39

Post by claytongulick »

I tried to read TFA to learn about what's going on. It's an article about an invasive species of mushroom, right? I'd like to be informed.

The first sentence is:

"The razor blade of the newly unpacked surgical scalpel glints in the late Autumn light."

So I just immediately stopped reading.

This style of writing is exhausting and too common. It's an article about mushrooms, not a spy action thriller.

It feels like there had been some shift over the past decade that has been pushing / encouraging this style of writing, and I'm not sure what's caused it or what the solution is.

It's getting to the point that I'll need to use an LLM to summarize any article I care about to just extract the relevant info.

That would be particularly ironic if it was an LLM that generated the article.

Re: An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests

#40

Post by ausbah »

claytongulick wrote: post #39

I tried to read TFA to learn about what's going on. It's an article about an invasive species of mushroom, right? I'd like to be informed. The first sentence is: "The razor blade of the newly unpacked surgical scalpel glints in the late Autumn light." So I just immediately stopped reading. This style of writing is exhausting and too common. It's an article about mushrooms, not a spy action thriller. It feels like the…

i would peg it as “new yorker syndrome”. every story needs to have an e2e narrative mixed into the info dumping. fun to read but lots of time
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