Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

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Stamets’s best work to date, Mycelium Running provides a wealth of information showing how fungal mycelia and mushrooms can profoundly improve the quality of human life. Should be mandatory reading for government policy makers.” Paul Stamets does a thorough job of explaining "How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World". Apparently mushrooms can absorb toxic waste. Yay! Mushrooms! I've been reading small parts of this book for six months. I found it hard to concentrate on the technical descriptions if I read too much in one sitting.

From a purely scientific perspective, I enjoyed what this book had to offer. From a literary perspective, however, I ran into some serious stylistic problems. This book, from my understanding, is scientific literature meant for the general public, to pique their interest in mycology and hopefully spur more dialogue about its importance. But such scientific literature has a threefold job - it has to be accessible, persuasive, and authoritative all at once. It can't bog down the reader with excess terminology, nor can it dumb things down too much or become overzealous; otherwise it loses credibility. I hate to say it, but Mycelium Running falls into the latter categories. The first 1/3 suffers from these common science-writing traps, while the rest read better though still with occasional flaws. Overall, this book could have been better written, edited, and organized. But to be fair I'll review it separately on what I did and didn't like. The author of numerous books and papers on the subject of mushroom identification and cultivation, Stamets has discovered four new species of mushrooms. He is an advocate of the permaculture system of growing, and considers fungiculture a valuable but underutilized aspect of permaculture. He is also a leading researcher into the use of mushrooms in bioremediation, processes he terms mycoremediation and mycofiltration. The structure of the chapters, which often move from hyper-detailed analysis of a trial to unsubstantiated speculations on what could be possible in future. The speculation isn't in itself always a problem, but being intermixed with such detail often gives it more weight than it deserves. The first half of the book also left me curious about patent law as it applies to living organisms and how Stamets and others operate in this space. The first chapter almost made me quit reading, since the author is clearly a lunatic. However, we were slow enough at work that I was forced to give this another chance and the first half, excepting the intro, is quite fun to read. For anarchists and foresters alike. The second half is an encyclopeadic cookbook for "medicinal mushrooms" also quite skip-able.Various fun facts about gourmet, medicinal and toxic mushrooms. These were enjoyable, along with the anecdotes and studies behind these findings. I won't be attempting truffle or chanterelle cultivation anytime soon, but I appreciated the warning that our regular button mushrooms should be sourced responsibly, since they can take up dangerous levels of heavy metals depending on their origin. I forgot I was on a waiting list for almost a year to receive this one from the library, unfortunately my interest in fungi and mushrooms has somewhat waned since reading a similar book last year. Mycoforestry and mycogardening: the use of mycelium for companion cultivation for the benefit and protection of plants. I was looking for a general introduction to mushrooms and their myriad uses. This book gave me that and much more. The first part of the book goes into great detail about the amazing uses of mushrooms, from cleaning up toxic waste, to rehabilitating landscapes devastated by fire, over-harvesting, or pests, to cancer prevention, to facilitating the growth of other agricultural products. And oh, by the way, food.

Stamets makes you daydream about the endless possibilities that the fungal world offers even while reading a book that is closer to being a textbook than a novel. The role of oxalic acid and calcium oxalates in sequestering carbon dioxide and building the carbon bank Stamets was the recipient of the "Bioneers Award" from The Collective Heritage Institute in 1998,[4] as well as the "Founder of a New Northwest Award" from the Pacific Rim Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils in 1999. He was also named one of Utne Reader's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" in their November–December 2008 issue. In February 2010, Paul received the President's Award from the Society for Ecological Restoration: Northwest Chapter, in recognition of his contributions to Ecological Restoration. His work was featured in the documentary film The 11th Hour.[5] He has also been featured in the eco-documentary films Dirt (film)[6] and 2012, Time for a Change (film).[7]Paul Stamets manages to convey his passion for mushrooms, making all of us who are passionate about them build a small mycelium that unites us. He also spreads that little great hope that makes you think that maybe we still have time to save the planet if we listen to the earth.

Mushrooms are in many ways the earths largest organism. They can spread a network of communicating spores over many miles. If you look at mega-colony of mushroom spores, it is strikingly similar to images of cosmic nebula and galaxies. Thank you fractal mathematics. I”m pretty sure Stamets mentions somewhere in that book that decomposition by ’shrooms releases much of the involved biological carbon as gas, primarily as carbon dioxide. I don’t recall any mention of better mechanisms, though. The gist, as I recall it, is that this is the natural way of recycling nutrients to create healthy soil, with the implication that it’s good, and the best we can hope for. More support for determining what mushrooms are native to your area or could be cultivated outdoors in your climate--maybe a world map with annotations? This is a concern for those of us in the arid southwest with less organic content in soils, bacteria-dominant carbon cycles, and not much of a cold season. This book is a manual for the mycological rescue of the planet. Setting the stage for the mycorestoration revolution, Mycelium Running unveils new methods for growing mushrooms, generating mycelium, and implanting mushroom colonies into the environment. Capitalizing on the digestive power of mycelium, this pioneering book shows how to strengthen sustainability of habitats while providing a multitude of biological benefits. Based upon the premise that habitats and humans (animals) have immune systems, and that mushrooms are the beneficial bridges for both, Mycelium Running marks the dawn of a new era: the use of mycelial membranes for ecological health. Linking mushroom cultivation, permaculture, ecoforestry, bioremediation and soil enhancement, Stamets makes the case that mushroom farms can be reinvented as healing arts centers, steering ecological evolution for the benefit of humans living in harmony with its inhabitants. Four components of mycorestoration are described in detail:This is the first book to give the Kingdom of the Fungi its proper place in the scheme of things. It is the most important book on nature that I’ve seen in years.” An excellent handbook for everyone now taking an interest in a branch of life that has been shunned for far too long. The Fermentation Edition at Why is this interesting? brought up an twist that I wanted to add in here. I really want to continue learning about mushrooms (any book recommendations are welcome), hunting them, appreciating them, tasting them and following Paul's work closely.

This visionary and practical book should be an instant classic in the emerging science of how to use nature’s wisdom and fecundity to rescue the earth and ourselves from the unwelcome consequences of human cleverness.“ Das Buch ist reich bebildert, und dazu geeignet, die gängigen Pilzarten zu bestimmen. Der Autor beschreibt eingehend die Möglichkeiten, Pilze in der Landwirtschft und im Gartenbau einzusetzen, um die Qualität des Bodens auf natürliche Art zu optimieren, oder das Wachstum von Pflanzen zu fördern, indem ihnen eine Verbindung mit Mycorrhiza ermöglicht wird. Das Buch ist leicht verständlich, unterhaltsam, enthält aber gleichzeitig eine Fülle von Informationen. Well-written, well-illustrated, and with many references for further reading, this is a book that takes readers way beyond the idea that mushrooms are merely useful as food. Introducing concepts of fungi as life-saving medicines, forestry protection (myco-forestry) and land reclamation (myco-remediation), it really gets you up out of your chair and experimenting at home or in your garden.

Chapter 1: as a manifesto of possible things, it's a good read. But there's a lot of conjecture, "I suppose it could"s and generally big ideas that have very little grounding in much apart from Stamets' own musing (which whilst undoubtedly have a basis in his own extensive experimentation, are pretty wild). Starhawk (2006). "Notes from Underground – Book review: Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World". Yes!. Positive Futures Network (38). ISSN 1089-6651. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013 . Retrieved 1 January 2013. John Norris, former deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and founder of the Bioterrorism Institute The basic science goes like this: Microscopic cells called “mycelium”--the fruit of which are mushrooms--recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What Stamets has discovered is that we can capitalize on mycelium’s digestive power and target it to decompose toxic wastes and pollutants (mycoremediation), catch and reduce silt from streambeds and pathogens from agricultural watersheds (mycofiltration), control insect populations (mycopesticides), and generally enhance the health of our forests and gardens (mycoforestry and myco-gardening). The book starts by diving deep into the mysterious underground network of mycelium, the foundation of the mushroom ecosystem. You'll learn how these tiny threads can break down dead plant matter and form partnerships with plants that will blow your mind!