Posted on 04/10/2010 4:18:23 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Lightning makes mushrooms more plentiful, according to ongoing research that offers a solid scientific basis for Japanese farming lore.
For generations, Japanese farmers have welcomed storms over their fields based on the belief that lightning strikes provoke plentiful harvests of mushrooms, which are staples of Japanese cuisine.
Currently, mushroom demand is so high that dealers are increasingly turning to foreign suppliers. Japan imports about 50,000 tons of mushrooms a year, mainly from China and South Korea.
As part of a four-year study, scientists in northern Japan have been bombarding a variety of mushrooms in lab-based garden plots with artificially induced lightning to see if electricity actually makes the fungi multiply.
The latest results show that lightning-strength jolts of electricity can more than double the yield of certain mushroom species compared with conventional cultivation methods.
"We have tried these experiments with ten types of mushroom so far and have found that it is effective in eight species," said Koichi Takaki, an associate professor in engineering at Iwate University.
"We saw the best effects in shiitake and nameko mushrooms, while we also tested reishi mushrooms, which are not edible but are used in certain types of traditional Chinese medicine," he said.
Where did you find this photo - I’m curious where it is? Giants!
Sept 11-12, 2010 25th Annual Mushroom Festival a fun packed, two-day event in historic Kennett Square, Pennsylvania on Saturday and Sunday, September 11-12, 2010. Celebrate the mushroom as well as the beauty, history and excitement of Southern Chester County with music, children’s rides and a variety of entertainment.
I have a question maybe you could answer...I use to get giant puffballs growing in one spot on my property..One year, one got a large as a small kitchen table....
One year I put out a salt lick for the deer and of course during the winter snows and spring rains I am sure a lot of the salt went into the ground. Now I have no puffballs growing....is it possible that the salt lick killed the puffballs rooting system...
I haven’t had any for 5 years now....and only had put out one salt lick.....
just wondering if that could have been the reason they disappeared...every once in a while I will get a handful or morels in spring, but never in the same place twice...thanks..
Maybe its the Nitrogen that Lighting puts out.
shroom ping
Um...storms bring RAIN...and mushrooms are like 85.92% WATER...so that makes sense to me. :)
Well, lightning ‘fixes’ the nitrogen in the air that is otherwise unavailable to plants. That’s why everything is so much greener after a thunderstorm.
What makes mushrooms grow in one place and not another is not even entirely understood by mycologists and I am not one. My reference library is pretty large, too, so I’ve done some reading on the subject. However, I would guess that the salt did cause the soil to stop being a welcome place for the puffballs.
I’ve noticed that chanterelles and boletes do tend to appear in the same place year to year - shaggy manes also. I think it may have more to do with the nutrients in the soil as apposed to any root system. The mushrooms that aren’t picked leave their spores in the same area where they grow and then grow from the spores taking root the next year or whatever year they appear again. Weather conditions also have an effect on it for sure.
There are some great references on mushrooms on the internet. Many are on university sites. But here is one that is really detailed:
Wish I knew the answer to your question but I am just guessing. Maybe you can find a lead on the above site or by Scroogling it - something like “growing conditions mushrooms” might be a good start.
Hope your puffballs come back. They are to die for when picked all white on the interior, sliced and then browned in a skillet in butter. Yummee!
Good guess.
Isn’t this from a Ray Bradbury story?
Have you eaten elephant ear mushrooms? I found one, just one, when I was about 10, took it home, fried it in butter, and ate it. It was great. The only other mushrooms I saw back then in the countryside near Peoria were morels and hen of the woods.
Never had the pleasure. Looked it up and found this:
http://americanmushrooms.com/taxa/Gyromitra_brunnea_01.htm .
Ever find “dead man’s fingers”? Weird but no eat.
http://www.illinoismushrooms.com/Home.html
“A site for Illinois mushroom lovers”
(gotta be some compensation for being from Obamaland)
I really wasn’t sure thats what they were at first...I took one to a local restaurant that had a chef that wore a real high cap, so I thought he might know something about them...Yep they were puffballs and he said as a child his mother would slice them like a pancake put in a frying pan and with a little syrup they were heavenly.. But because of government regulation wild mushrooms are not usable in any restaurant. The morels are pretty patchy when I do spot them...a couple of years ago while walking the property with my son we found 2 handfuls of morel. They haven’t grown there since...strange little fungi...He said they were delicious...
Morels - I think of them as brain mushrooms due to their appearance.
Some years here, one or two types of mushrooms are everywhere; the next year it is another type and then the next year zip, nothing. Last year was a nothing year here.
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