Harvesting of Fungi - A Threat To Future Abundance?

[Klenchblaize]

Prompted by an another BBC 2 Autumn Watch debate, as posed by Chris Packham (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/autumnwatch/2009/11/why_i_enjoy_watching_rather_th.html), what do you think of the assertion that equates to increased interest equals bad news for our Autumn carpet?

Cheers

 

[Toddy]

Funny this should come up now. I was speaking with a Mycologist recently and I asked about this and the other theory that picking the fruiting body is in fact not harmful to the fungi but in a way encourages it to produce more, *providing* that in picking the fruits no damage is done to the mycellium, the underground/ bark roots.

We prune roses, sweetpeas, apple trees and the like to increase the crop, the idea is that fungi will respond in a similar fashion.

Certainly in countries where mushroom picking is a constant, such as many European ones, there is no shortage of fungi.
Here, where there is very little traditional use remaining in our society, that's not always the case.

Is it environmental ? or is it that they need picking ?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Tetley]

But maybe the herds of enthusiastic people heading off into the woods would be thinned by incorrect identification of the poisonous varieties and would leave more for the rest of us ?

just an idle thought

 

[BorderReiver]

As long as the fruiting bodies are cut and not ripped out of the ground, there should not be too much risk.

It's to hoped that the spores from inaccessible plants will fill in any gaps.

 

[TallMikeM]

it's an interesting debate (in general as well as specific to funghi). The recieved wisdom has it that if more people do it then they'll strip an area clean. This forms the basis of a lot of our current thinking about wild areas, nature reserves and so on (not just in this country by abroad also).
However, there is strong evidence to suggest that when people are given more access to wild areas then the opposite happens. In this book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Agri-cultur...=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258386694&sr=8-3

the author draws upon a broad range of examples to suggest that when people have access to wild areas, then bio diversity increases and habitiat depletion actually goes down.

Ofcourse, this isn't the universal truth, and what will actually happen only time will tell. My gut instinct tells me that fungi gathering will be (as a large scale activity) a short lived thing.

 

[some like it cold]

not directly related to fungi but look at coppicing the biodiversity is increased by the removal of the wood on a cyclical basis

 

[Klenchblaize]

I believe the counter argument would be that in the case of harvesting fungi our intervention cannot improve on the biodiversity created by nature's arrangements for propagation. We may harvest ("coppice") a Penny Bun with a clean cut of the mycelium with a mushrooming knife whereas creatures of the forest would, by the process of feeding and transportation, spread the spores far and wide. Perhaps an even better example being that if you stamp on a puff ball rather than take it home unblemished which is more likely to result in more puff balls?

Just a thought as I'm no Mycologist!

Cheers

 

[Mikey P]

But maybe the herds of enthusiastic people heading off into the woods would be thinned by incorrect identification of the poisonous varieties and would leave more for the rest of us ?

just an idle thought

This is called Darwinism and is an example of a form of natural selection. Hurrah!