This autumn I fell in love again. This time with a mushroom, Armillaria mellea. It is known as honey fungus, and most people villify it. It can infect and kill trees and shrubs, and spreads to new hosts by its thick black rhizomorphs, which look like bootlaces. It fruits are beautiful, and are tasty, but should be well cooked.
My love emerged as I stumbled across it again and again. It was always on weak trees within healthy woodland habitats. This is really incredible – it does not destroy woodlands. It picks off the unhealthy trees and quickly, so quickly, turns them into soil.
That’s great, but it gets better. It does destroy plantations. It can decimate acre after acre of monoculture trees. What is thought to be the largest organism in the world is a honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) network spreading 3.4 square miles in Oregon, USA. It has fed on conifer plantations. And it is making soil.
Trees are not lone wolves. They are only healthy when they live alongside and with and around numerous other species, other living beings. They live well as part of a web. If the web is not very complex, then the trees will not be healthy. This is what is happening in plantations, and it is the perfect niche for honey fungus, which recycles these unhealthy trees into a rich foundation for more complex life-webs.
Honey fungus mushrooms emerge mostly in September and October. They release spores which travel on the air, but which can also be carried to new locations by birds, insects or mammals such as humans. Each mushroom produces billions of spores, all of which could help enrich the earth.
Tags: fungi, plantations, regeneration, soil, the land, vitality, woodland
