The Wild Mushrooms of the Western Ghats Will Amaze You With Their Biodiversity
Wild Mushrooms: Diverse, Edible, Toxic, Beautiful
Wild mushrooms are a great locally sourced food that is nutritious and free. Collecting mushrooms from the wilderness is one of the most nostalgic activities one could undertake, given how our lives changed as we urbanised.
Mushroom picking is a tradition still in many societies. Spotting and collecting orange Chanterelles, Parasol mushrooms, Boletus, and Honey Fungus, the foragers move in the woods with patience and a curious urge to find pristine food right from its source, Nature.
Beware of toxic lookalikes, and hone your skills to identify edible ones; once you are an authentic mushroom hunter, the wilderness will gift you many surprises for the palate, and you will remain in the safe zone.
Depleted as they might be, our forests and wilderness remain a rich haven of edible mushrooms such as parasols, morels, chanterelles, buttons, meadows, puffballs and horse mushrooms.
Always remember that a toxic lookalike of an edible mushroom could become a threat to your life if consumed. However, there is more to feast upon the beauty and diversity of the wild mushrooms with your eyes than for eating them. On a rain-drenched morning, there is the opportunity for a fascinating hobby if you love nature and revel in its charm and hues.
In the Western Ghats, the most majestic mountain ranges of South India and a biodiversity hotspot, there are stretches of farmlands fostered by the monsoon rains. If one loves the freshness of a farm ecosystem in the shades of a rainforest (and could dare the swarming mosquitos), one can find a few hidden treasures here- populations of wild mushrooms donning all possible colours and shapes.
They thrive mostly on the damp floor and fallen and decaying wood parts, colonies of them and the loners. A few can be easily identified by a mushroom enthusiast, but a few retain their mysterious identity until scrutinised by an expert botanist. However, simply looking at them is worth the walk. On a rainy day, I carried a camera and photographed a few.
Of the around 14000 species of identified mushrooms, 750 can be found in the Western Ghats. I showcase a few from this forest region's mushroom species collection, all photographed on a homestead in south India.
Mushrooms play a significant role in the ecosystem as decomposers of organic matter sources of nutrition and medicine. Since ancient times, humans have consumed mushrooms, the very act gaining a name for itself, mycophagy. The Greeks called mushrooms 'sons of gods' because of the sudden and dramatic appearances mushrooms make after a thunderstorm.
Bracket fungi are a parasitic mushroom species. They are also called polypores and have a comparatively hard and wood-like body. They can be found on live and dead tree trunks and are easily identifiable. The bracket-shaped bodies of these fungi caused them to be named bracket fungi.
This group of fungi comes in many breathtaking colours and gradations. They are not as fragile as other mushrooms are. You can put some varnish on them and keep them for years in your drawing room or collectable shelf.
Ganoderma, the well-known fungus used in Chinese medicine, is a bracket fungus. There is a misconception that bracket fungi infect tree branches and destroy them. The fact is that this fungus infects a tree branch only when it is already dead. By rotting the dead parts, these fungi recycle nutrients for the tree, and this relationship between the fungi and the tree is mutually beneficial.
Bracket Fungi
Galerina marginata
Galerina marginata is a mushroom found in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Though not an edible mushroom, it looks similar to certain edible ones. The mushroom's cap changes shape from conical to near flat when ageing. The cap colour also fades with age. These mushrooms have a rusty brown spore print, whereas the edible ones have a white or dark brown/purple-brown spore print. Still, to differentiate between toxic and edible lookalikes is a difficult task.
Galerina marginata
The Curious Case of Puffball Mushroom
Lycoperdaceae mushroom is commonly named puffball mushroom. Pestle-shaped, this mushroom is a loner found growing on the ground. Most of this family of mushrooms are edible, but certain impostor mushrooms imitate puffball mushrooms and, if accidentally eaten, can be fatal.
Death Cap Mushrooms and the Destroying Angels grow on decaying wood, on the ground, and in grasslands. To identify the edibles, the mushroom is vertically cut into two halves. If the inside of the mushroom is pure white, with no colour or markings, it is safe to eat. Puffball mushroom pieces, when put in soups, just look like Tofu.
Calvacin, a chemical found inside puffball mushrooms, is now being investigated for its potential as a cancer drug. A curious feature of this mushroom is that it can grow quite large, even to the size of a football, and this growth can take only 4-5 hours when it rains. The actual vegetative part of a puffball mushroom stays underground, spread in the soil like a white root network. Plucking a puffball mushroom does not affect this mother fungus, which will develop into a puffball again.
Puffball Mushroom
Some Other Unidentified Beauties of the Western Ghats
Mushroom Facts
Termite Hill Mushrooms
Humans are known to cultivate mushrooms, but termites also cultivate mushrooms. These mushrooms are seen on termite hills and are cultivated by termites to eat to supplement their diet with “enzymes and nitrogen”.
Once the mushrooms are fully grown, the termites start eating them. Western Ghats forests have plenty of termite hills. Even the homesteads in its watershed area have many. People in these regions believe the abandoned termite hills are inhabited by snakes, and as they worship snakes as gods, they ask their kids not to disturb the termite hills and a fragile wonder of nature is thus preserved.
Tree-Specific Mushrooms
Certain mushrooms have a tree preference and cannot be seen under any other tree than its preferred tree. A variety of Bolete mushrooms are seen only under Ash trees. Though not certain yet, this tree preference could be because these mushrooms exist symbiotically with a small creature called leaf curl ash aphids, found on Ash trees only.
Anonymous and Thriving
Thousands of unidentified fungi inhabit the Earth, and scientists keep identifying around 1200 new species each year. Unknown varieties of the very popular Porcini mushroom were located in a grocery store in London when scientists put mushroom samples collected from London stores to lab testing. This incident reminds us that extreme caution should be taken when choosing the mushrooms on your platter.
The Largest Living Being on Earth
BBC Earth reported that a honey fungus 2400 years old, living underground and spread over a 3.8-kilometre geographic area in the Blue Mountains of Oregon, is considered the largest living organism on the planet. Armillaria Solidipes is the scientific name of this fungus. It becomes visible to the eyes, or at least its parts, when in the Fall, small mushroom caps pop out from this mushroom mammoth of the underworld.
Solidipes Mushrooms
Jump back to the biodiversity of Western Ghats mushrooms and look at these tiny beauties growing on decaying organic matter. That brings to mind the size diversity of different mushrooms.
The giant mushroom, Armillaria Solidipes, had caused an entire forest stretch to die out in Oregon. This incident brought the attention of scientists to the Solidipes mushroom, and studies revealed that the mycelia of the Solidipes mushroom bind together to form a single individual fungus. How can such a combined fungi group be considered an individual? The definition of an individual organism is based on the ability of its cells to communicate with each other and coordinate actions, a definition which Solidipes perfectly fits.
Hymenoscyphus Fructigenus is the potential contestant for the smallest mushroom on earth. They grow on beechnuts, acorns, etc., and are found in North America.
History of Mushroom Picking
Mushroom picking history dates back to the upper Palaeolithic era (about 40000 years ago). The dental examination of a fossilised human from that period proved that people ate mushrooms in that era.
China and Rome were two major mushroom consumers of the ancient world, and Romans called mushrooms the food of Gods. In Rome, only the rich could afford to eat mushrooms.
Many cultures, like the Mayans, Vedic and Nordic cultures, used psychedelic fungi in religious rituals Milky mushrooms, button mushrooms, Porcini mushrooms, and Oyster mushrooms are the most important cultivated varieties. Some other edible species are quite difficult to cultivate.
Polland is a well-known mycophilic (mushroom-loving) country. Mushrooms picked from forests are still a part of their Christmas supper. Polich local markets abound in these delicacies.
Oyster Lookalikes
Mushrooms Bring Rain
Ants and frogs taking refuge under the umbrella of a mushroom when it suddenly rains; sound familiar? Our fairy tales are full of these images! Such tales tell us mushrooms grow in size when it rains. What if mushrooms can also make it rain? In 2016, the reputed science magazine Scientific American reported that the millions of mushroom spores floating in our atmosphere provide a solid surface for water to condense, thus enabling rain cloud formation. The mushroom spores are not the lone agents in this process but take part along with dirt particles and pollen. Anyway, they have earned a name as “rain seeds”.
The rest of my mushroom stories and mushroom pictures I am going to store away for another time. Next time, as you walk in Nature after it rains, keep looking for these delicate beauties that can often outperform flowers in their grace and poise.
References
Dr Anand, T. and Pereira, G.N., (September 27, 2008), The fascinating world of mushrooms, daijiworld.com, Retrieved from http://www.daijiworld.com/chan/exclusive_arch.asp?ex_id=960
mushroomexpert.com
earthplanet.org
Biodiversity in the western ghats: An information kit, nzdl.org, Retrieved from http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-00---off-0hdl--00-0----0-10-0---0---0direct-10---4-------0-1l--11-en-50---20-about---00-0-1-00-0--4----0-0-11-10-0utfZz-8-00&cl=CL1.2&d=HASHd10071ff5b9a81a2180c80.6.7&x=1
Boletinellus merulioides, (n.d.), Mushroomexpert.com, Retrieved from http://www.mushroomexpert.com/boletinellus_merulioides.html
You may have been eating mushrooms that were unknown to science, (n.d.), Smithsonian.com, Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-may-have-been-eating-mushrooms-unknown-science-180951974/
You may have been eating mushrooms that were unknown to science, (n.d.), Smithsonian.com, Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-may-have-been-eating-mushrooms-unknown-science-180951974/
The Largest Living Thing on Earth is a Humungous Fungus, BBC Earth. 2014.
We Know So Little About Mushrooms That Unidentified Species are Hiding in Plain Sight, Willy Blackmore. takepart.com.
Frazer, J. (February 24, 2016), Made by rain, mushrooms also make it, Scientificamerican.com, Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/made-by-rain-mushrooms-also-make-it/
History of Mushroom Consumption and Its Impact on Traditional View on Mycobiota: An Example from Poland, by Marcin Kotowski, 2019.
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