Underwater mushies?

Yep - its true.

A new species of mushroom has been recently discovered by scientists in the Rogue Valley, Oregon.

The new species of mushroom grows underwater and is believed to be the only species of its kind.
Being scientists, of course, they had to give it a snappy title - so they called it Psathyrella aquatica.

I'm more excited by the notion of ready to drink mushroom soup!!

Keep yourself warm this winter with mushrooms!

We all know that insulation is key to keeping your house warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It's important to insulate well in order to reduce the amount of energy you use.

Traditional fibreglass used in insulation batting can irritate your skin, eyes and airways amd foam plastic insulation contains petrochemicals. But now the humble mushroom is poised to come to the rescue!

A new insulating product is set to enter the insulation market within the next two years. The product, called Greensulate, is fire-retardant, biodegradable and requires no petrochemicals for its production - because it is grown from Mycelia, the roots of mushrooms.

Is there no end to the number of benefits to be gained from our fungi friends??

Wild mushrooms fight prostate cancer

Israeli scientists claim that a wild mushroom, used in traditional Chinese medicine for a century, could treat prostate cancer.

Researchers at the university in northern Israel said they found molecules in the Ganoderma lucidum mushroom, commonly known as the reishi, which help supress some mechanisms involved in the progression of prostate cancer.

"We already knew the mushroom could impede the development of cancer by affecting the immune system. The in-vitro trials we have done show that it attacks the cancer cells directly," chief researcher Ben Zion Zaidman said."These results give rise to hope about developing medication to treat prostate cancer," he said of research carried out to date only in Petri dishes. The research still has to be tested on animals.

The reishi is found only in remote, wild areas, preferring a habitat of rotting plum tree trunks, sometimes oak trees, in heavily forested mountain areas.The Chinese have tried to grow reishi mushrooms for centuries, but it was only in the early 1970s that Japanese experts managed to cultivate them.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer among men, with more than 543,000 cases diagnosed worldwide each year.

Black mushrooms - the new thin?

Black-coloured foods are now all the rage in places like Japan. That's because they are thought to have anti-inflammatory properties and perhaps even help protect against heart disease and cancer.

You may have thought about eating black beans, but what about black rice, or black mushrooms?

At Asian groceries, you can even get things like black sesame oil; black vinegar and black soybeans to complement your meals.

So what's the big deal? Well some say these ebony colored foods have more health benefits, and others say they have deeper, more intense flavours.

What next?

Pink foods make you smile? Brown foods make you taller?

Just keep eating my mushrooms - black ones, yellow ones, grey ones ....

Mind how you go now Cobber!

Australian health authorities have issued a warning against eating death cap mushrooms after two people were rushed to hospital after eating them.

The death cap mushroom is a particularly nasty 'shroom and apparently it is responsible for 90 per cent of all mushroom-related deaths.

An unseasonably mild and wet November and December has led to an upsurge in Death Caps and now authorities have been forced to issue warnings. Two people have died and about a dozen others have been poisoned as a result of eating Death Caps in Australia in the past 12 years.

Commonly found near oak trees, Death Caps (left) are 40-160mm wide and usually pale green or yellow in colour. Symptoms of death cap poisoning include violent stomach pains, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Just thought you might to know that - so mind how you go.

And if you are in any doubt about whether the Death Cap is the mushroom for you - there's a clue in the title!

Light up your life with Mushrooms!

I found this whilst hanging around for my Wild Mushroom Omelette this morning!

With the arrival of Japan’s rainy season, a mysterious type of green, glow-in-the-dark mushroom begins to sprout in Wakayama prefecture. The Mycena lux-coeli mushrooms, known locally as shii no tomobishi-dake, sprout from fallen chinquapin trees.

As they grow, a chemical reaction occurs, causing them to glow a ghostly green.

The luminescent mushrooms were long believed to be indigenous solely to Tokyo’s Hachijojima Island after they were discovered there in the early 1950s. In 1995, however, mycologists found the fungus growing wild in coastal areas of the southern Kii peninsula, as well as in Kyushu and other areas.

All sounds a bit funny to me!

For goodness sake .... wild means wild!!

It must be a quiet news week!

The latest crackpot idea from scientists hit the news stands this week with the news that mushrooms could come from trucks. Yep, you heard right.

From trucks!

Apparently, a new concept, known as Made in Transit would see foods, such as mushrooms actually being grown on board trucks on the way to the supermarket. Distributors could become farmers turning their trucks into high density growing facilities and reprogramming what big business see as a waste of time into growing (ie more profit) time.

Here's what the news report said "Our obsession with fresh food irrespective of season and location fuels constant developments in extending their life after the moment of harvest until the point of consumption. Ripening is manipulated through the removal or addition of the ripening gas ethylene, and breathing is slowed down through extensive refrigeration and through modified atmosphere packaging. But these so-called post-harvest technologies are not only economically and ecologically expensive, they are essentially damage control measures that only slow the eventual deterioration down.

‘Made in Transit’ proposes to shift the paradigm from preserving freshness to enabling growth along the way, a shift from ‘best before’ to ‘ready by’ for perishable goods. Growing food on the way would mean it gets better as it travels and that it would be still alive upon arrival, ready for harvest by the consumer (bypassing harvest labour, which for mushrooms can account for 40% of overall production cost). Applied to mushrooms, it also could mean other unexpected things, like more diversity in our supermarkets as some of the most fragile mushrooms (too fragile to withstand transport) could theoretically become available anywhere by growing them on the way. The global industry already shapes our food—thickening a tomato’s wall so it can withstand rough handling, or growing watermelons square so they stack more efficiently. Humans created this global condition. The next step is when the global market starts to produce our food, literally."

For goodness sake, why don't they just leave us - and nature - alone?

Wild mushrooms are called wild mushrooms because they ... errmm .... grow wild.

Or should we just go the whole hog and change their name to Suzuki Fungus?