Thunder and lightning spawn mushrooms.(Article in Progress)

Thunder and lightning spawn mushrooms.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Lightning fixes atmospheric Nitrogen into Nitrate, so with other elements into their oxide compounds, vital to the plants, fungi and many other organisms.

In the province, it is a tradition to go hunting for mushrooms in bamboo groves, on anthills, under rice hay and banana stalks during the monsoon season, specifically after a period of heavy thunder and lightning. And what do we know?

Old folks are right as they show you the prize - baskets full of Volvariella (rice hay or banana mushroom), Plerotus (abalone mushroom), Auricularia (tainga ng daga), and a host of other wild mushroom species.

Where did the mushrooms come from? When lightning strikes, nitrogen, which comprise 78 percent of the air combines with oxygen (21 percent of the air) forming nitrate (NO3). Scientists call this process, nitrogen fixation or nitrification. Nitrate, which is soluble in water, is washed down by rain. Electrical discharge also aids in the fixation of other elements such as sulfur, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium into soluble compounds.

Lightning occurs every second in any place of the earth, maintaining the earth’s supply of these and other life-giving compounds. Not only green plants benefit from these natural fertilizers, but also phytoplankton (microscopic one-celled plants) - and the lowly mushroom whose vegetative stage is but some cottony mass of mycelia enmeshed in decomposing media such as plant residues. With nitrate and other nutrients now available, coupled with favorable conditions of the environment, the saprophyte transforms into its reproductive phase. This is the mushroom we are familiar with – umbrella-like and fleshy. In all its luxuriance and plenty, it is not unusual to discover clusters or hills of mushrooms in just a single spot.

1. Blue Bracket Fungus (Postia caesia)*

Layer after layer, shelf after shelf,
season after season, you grow
into a colony several storeys high,
page after page, row by row,
dying in summer, rising in spring,
bluest in autumn glow;
rarest color in living things on earth,
yet widest, deepest is blue;

dead you'll be after your host tree,
beyond you live as a trophy.

Dr Abe V Rotor

A colony of blue bracket mushroom (Postia caesia) made into a piece of art - Nature's trophy by the author. The trophy, 14" tall, is among other Nature's trophies on display at Living with Nature Center, San Vicente Botanical Garden, San Vicente Ilocos Sur

*Bracket fungi, or shelf fungi, are among the many groups of fungi that comprise the phylum Basidiomycota. Characteristically, they produce shelf- or bracket-shaped or occasionally circular fruiting bodies called conks that lie in a close pattern, (Internet)

2. Monstrous Tree Mushroom

Do you believe in the spirit of nature?

Dr Abe V Rotor

Also called bracket fungi or shelf fungi, they produce woody, shelf- or bracket-shaped or circular fruiting bodies. Most polypores, as they are called, inhabit tree trunks or branches consuming the wood, but some soil-inhabiting species form mycorrhiza with trees. Specimen was found growing on fallen coconut trunk, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur, author's residence.

Suddenly it appears, fresh and alive

- and growing before your very eyes.

The spirit of Nature in disguise

coming in full view. Believe!

What happens ultimately to this shelf fungus? To its substrate - coconut trunk?

3. Shelf Fungi

Shelf mushrooms are scientifically known as Polypore Fungi or polypores for their large fruiting bodies or tubes on the underside. Framed model by the author, on display at the San Vicente (IS) Botanical Garden 2020

Monsoon is mushroom season. Mushrooms are practically everywhere. You don't have to go far to find one.- on the fields, limbs of trees, garbage dumps, even in damp corners of your house. When you find one growing on old shoes, you think a fairy lives there. Fairy tales are associated with mushroom. It is because of the stories of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson, Mga Kwento ni Lola Basyang, notwithstanding.

Mushrooms belong to Family Basidiomycetes, which together with Phycomycetes* (molds) and Fungi imferpecti (Penicillium)** occupy a fifth kingdom in the biological world - Mycophyta. Fungi are Nature's converter of organic compounds back to elements after the organism dies. That is why they are called decomposers. The chemical elements are then re-assembled once again into organic compounds by plants through photosynthesis, essential for the next generation of living things. The cycle is repeated ad infinitum.

Being decomposers, fungi are the first step in food chains. Many organisms benefit from the process, - monerans (bacteria) and protists (single-celled organisms), animals and plants. It is a world in itself. A world of transition, without it our world would not be what it is today.

Fungi provide a habitat of their own, which help in the regeneration of ecosystems such as grasslands and forests, and even our own gardens. They live but briefly, emerging suddenly as a colony, then disappear. But many mushrooms live long, perhaps even for many years, often remaining incognito in their mycellial

(microscopic) stage, only to "fruit" again in the next season.

What is probably the longest life of a shelf mushroom? In my research I found out that a tree bracket fungus with twenty rings may be twenty years old (just like the annular rings of a tree), but it could vary depending on the seasons. There have been reports of shelf mushrooms with forty rings and weigh up to three hundred pounds.

As long as the host plant survives, the shelf will continue to grow, so the simplest answer to how long a bracket fungus lives is — as long as the tree it infects.

Standing dead tree serves as host to a colony of mushrooms, as well as other saprophytes, until it finally falls down and decomposes into organic matter and becomes part of the soil. Photo taken at the former Ecological Sanctuary of St Paul University QC
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While there are mushrooms which are edible and commercially produced as food, the general rule is: Don't eat those you don't know, and those you are in doubt. Do not eat any bracket fungi that have not been properly identified by a qualified professional, some are DEADLY. And remember, there is no antidote for mushroom poisoning.
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Ganoderma Tea, Ganoderma Coffee

Ganoderma lucidum. Little is known about the safety of ganoderma. Ganoderma may cause a number of side-effects, including dizziness, stomach upset, and skin irritation. You should talk to your doctor before trying ganoderma. There have been a few case reports of people who have developed hepatitis after the use of Ganoderma lucidum products. (Internet)
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Common edible mushrooms: Cultured Pleurotus and wild Volvariella mushroom

*Phycomycetes has been abolished and in its place exists Zygomycetes, Chytridiomycetes, Plasmodiophoromycetes, Hyphochytridiomycetes, Trichomycetes and Oomycetes.

**Fungi imperfecti or Deuteromycota, are fungi which do not fit into the commonly established taxonomic classifications of fungi

4. Auricularia Mushroom (Tainga ng Daga)

Auricularia auricula-judae, English name jelly ear, is also known as Judas’s ear or Jew’s ear, is a species of fungus in the order Auriculariales. Basidiocarps are brown, gelatinous, and have a noticeably ear-like shape.

5. Stinkhorn mushroom

Stinkhorn mushroom (Phallus impudicus), Family Phallales

Youth and death, pleasure and sorrow,

One comes to this world after you;

Who and when we will never know,
In your domain where you grow.

You cover all, like grass in Auschwitz,
In fuzzy web, transforming into rich
Mass when the sky rolls in dreadful pitch,
Waking Lazarus as Zeus speaks -

In another body, time and space,
Where new life begins in a new place;
You are the link, and Nature the pace,
Of all life, ordered in seeming maze.

You link three worlds - yesterday
With tomorrow, and briefly today,
In our work, sleep - even as we play -
The world wakes up to a new day.~

6. Mushrooms grow on plant residues