Spreading spores?

[The Big Lebowski]

I carried out a little experiment today to see what happens next year. I found several chicken of the woods today (Laetiporus sulphureus) so removed some of the platelets and spread them over one whole tree. Its a fallen dead oak so would do no harm to a living tree. I'm just curious if other people do the same, or in an environmental way, it it going against the flow of things looking after themselves naturally? I don't intent to raise a heated debate, the reason I'm asking is for a few minutes I wondered if thousands of years ago, someone had a light-bulb moment and realized that by spreading seeds, the following year there might be more food. The birth of agriculture. It struck me as quite a powerful connection.

Maybe I just had an odd moment. It happens

 

[Geoff Dann]

Fungal spores are designed to drift a very long way. Changing their starting position by 2 metres will make not the slightest difference. Changing it by 2 miles would make a difference.

 

[Geoff Dann]

...the reason I'm asking is for a few minutes I wondered if thousands of years ago, someone had a light-bulb moment and realized that by spreading seeds, the following year there might be more food. The birth of agriculture. It struck me as quite a powerful connection.

Human beings were spreading the seeds of useful plants about a very long time before they adopted agriculture. They also "gardened" - they removed things that weren't so useful to let the useful things have more space. Amazonian tribes still do this, and I think it is safe to assume most hunter-gatherers did it to some extent. They must have known perfectly well what seeds are. Agriculture wasn't born until a human being noticed that a hybrid sort of wheat had appeared, which had massive seeds that couldn't operate properly as seeds, because their size had messed up the natural distribution mechanism. So the person in question must have understood that this new sort of wheat would only survive and prosper if it was deliberately harvested and planted.

 

[Harvestman]

So, in summary, you had an odd moment.

 

[Androo]

I'm no expert... and in my opinion the mycelium would most probably have already colonised the whole tree, and fruit the CotW. So I'd guess that putting more pieces of CotW on the same tree wouldn't make a difference. But on another tree....
After a quick think, it might actually be more effective if you took a piece of colonised wood and took that to another suitable tree, kept it wet and happy... I might try a few experiments myself.

 

[The Big Lebowski]

So, in summary, you had an odd moment.

Sounds like it

Thanks for the interesting reply's. Good reading!