Mushroom Methods Workshop

Abstracts

Book Launch: Underground Lovers - Encounters with Fungi

Alison Pouliot

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Once overlooked, fungi are the exhilarating new poster organisms reconfiguring our understanding of the natural word and capturing the public imagination. Underground Lovers is a captivating journey into the sensory realms of fungi. It's told through first-hand stories - from the Australian desert to Iceland's glaciers to America's Cascade Mountains - where we encounter glowing ghost fungi and the enigma of the lobster mushroom. We'll dwell with fungal allies and aliens, discover how fungi hold forests together, and why humans are deeply intwined with these compelling organisms. The book presents new questions and insights about fungi but is also an intimate celebration of their astonishing beauty and complexity. It melds science and personal reflection to explore overlooked themes, among them - fungi and fire, fungi and climate change, fungi and aesthetics, fungi in ecosystem restoration, and fungi and indigenous wisdom. What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Underground Lovers brings us to our knees, magnifier in hand, to find out.

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Fungal Liveliness: Forays into the Worlds of Mushrooms

Michael Hathaway

Fungi are remarkable beings: breathing in oxygen, dissolving rocks, and building webs of connection across kingdoms of life. Their lives have been shaping our planet for perhaps a billion years, but all of a sudden, now in the beginning of the 21st century — a time of ratcheting environmental despair — fungi are capturing the attention of a wide swath of society. Some say a “mushroom renaissance” is upon us.

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Why might this be happening and how might we engage with it joyfully and also critically? For social scientists and humanists, how might they engage with scientific and other forms of knowledge to think hard and with these modes of knowing? For natural scientists, how might they engage with others to learn more, to learn otherwise about our fungal kin? Some years ago, animal studies brought together scholars from many disciplines into a sometimes shared, often fractured conversation. More recently, plant studies is emergent, revealing some of the ways in which our understandings, shaped by animal ways of being ourselves, might need to be queered in relation to botanical ways of being. Now, how might us lovers and scholars of fungi learn from our peers as they have gone about their own engagements with plants and animals?

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From Zombies to Food and Medicine: Charismatic Encounters with the Caterpillar Fungus in China

Carolina Némethy

Following a 22-year-old Chinese medical journal entry found in a drawer of the researcher’s own home in Sweden to her 2023 fieldwork in China, this presentation delves into an exploration of the caterpillar fungus in the context of Chinese medicine. Decomposing the hype for medicinal mushrooms driven by both traditional uses and commercially driven interests, the caterpillar fungus reveals a rugged topography of environmental remoteness, widespread presence at medicine halls, artificial chemical extraction, adulterants, as well as everyday culinary use. This landscape exemplifies what Lai and Farquhar (2015) refer to as the coexistence of charisma and rationalization in Chinese medicine, which serves as a useful framework for deconstructing the ambiguity of the caterpillar fungus as both a food and a medicine – an ambiguity which transforms into tension upon considering the environmental limits of the fungus as a vulnerable species.      

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Sarcosoma globosum and New Fungal Observation Culture

Anna L. Ruotsalainen, Tapio Kekki, Esteri Ohenoja, Tea von Bonsdorff

Sarcocoma globosum (Witches cauldron) forms strange-looking, swollen sporocarps in nutrient-rich spruce forests in the spring. The species is internationally considered as near-threatened. It was categorized as near-threatened also in Finland until 2019, when the status of the species was updated as least concern. In Finland, user-friendly open database became available (www.laji.fi) and citizen science project Finnish Fungal Atlas started in 2015. Here, we analysed S. globosum observations in Finland. Our results suggest a huge increase in citizen observations of S. globosum after 2015. In contrast, specimens deposited in public herbaria and data from the environmental authorities have declined. Our results are indicative of emergence of a new, citizen-based observation culture of fungi. We conclude that changes in citizen observation activity may disguise true changes in fungal populations. There is a need for tools to deal with changes in observation activity in the evaluation of red list status of fungi.

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False Morel and the Trouble of Life Amid Ruins

Pieta Savinotko

False morel, Gyromitra esculenta, is an ascomycete fungus which fruits in spring and early summer. It grows on sandy soil particularly in former coniferous forest areas where the ground has been disturbed by forest harvesters or other machinery. Poisonous if eaten raw but delicious when properly processed, the mushroom engenders a peculiar phenomenon every spring: instead of flourishing forests, mushroom pickers head towards timber clearings, with even the soil preferably harrowed or scalped down to soil.

As false morel and its pickers attest, there is thriving fungal and fungi-inspired life in severely disturbed forests. For a researcher this poses an ethico-epistemological problem: how to account for the possibilities of life amid ruins without legitimizing the ruinous practices? When seeking answers to this trouble I have turned towards Eve Sedgwick’s thinking on paranoid and reparative reading. Paranoid reading practice shows false morel as a henchman for plantationocentric forestry, whereas reparative reading on false morel picking suggests a possibility to surpass the current destruction. By focusing on the ongoing to-and-fro movement between the two positions, research can bear witness to the complexities of life and to take responsibility for the performative power of knowledge production.

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Designing with Fungal Wonders: Exploring New Horizons with Polypores, Yeast, and Lichen

Mari Koppanen

As both a designer and researcher, Mari Koppanen’s work embodies the essence of fungi - empathetic, potential, and relatable. Presenting a range of material samples from fungi and fungi-related materials her work inspires us to reconsider our relationship with this extraordinary organism and invites us to embrace the possibilities it presents in the field of art and design. Alongside these samples, a short documentary highlights the remarkable properties and historical significance of amadou, a unique fungal material derived from tinder mushrooms.

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Fungi have captivated people who have understood their world as well as caused strong fears in those who haven’t experienced contact with this mystical organism. Fungi play a significant role in our lives, profoundly shaping our existence. They enable not only all living on earth but also offer a great variety of natural materials and pigments to explore.

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Beyond Mushrooms to Mycelium

Alison Pouliot

The reproductive structures of fungi such as mushrooms are conspicuous and captivating and have captured attention throughout history. But beyond mushrooms, out of sight in the subterrain, the clandestine wordings of mycelial fungi both underpin functioning terrestrial ecosystems while unravelling human frameworks for understanding nature. The notion of fungus mycelium wobbles the assumptions and premises that we use to conceive and categorise nature, manage ecosystems and build human societies. However, as we enter the 'fungal turn' these unruly fungal renegades might also inspire the innovative thinking needed to navigate an uncertain future. In this talk Alison shares insights from over two decades spent in the field with fungi across hemispheres.

Value of Wood Fibres to Feed Agricultural Soil Fungi

Taina Pennanen, Sannakajsa M. Velmala, Krista Peltoniemi, Kimmo Rasa, Hannu Fritze

Forest soils cleared for agricultural use are lacking particularly fungal networks. Therefore, our aim was to test whether we can improve the agricultural soil mycobiome by fertilizing with forest side stream products to gain back important forest soil microbiome members. Our results showed that forest industry-based side-streams increased in fungal biomass and community change indicated by DNA-amplicons when added to agricultural soil (Rasa et al. 2021). Simultaneously decreased erosion potential, measured as leaching of carbon and nutrients along soil profiles, was observed. Coniferous tree bark and its cascade-processed residuals to we tested in microcosms. Consistently with the results of the field study, bark-derived side streams showed potential to counteract the decline in fungal biomass and biodiversity of agricultural soils (Peltoniemi et al. 2023). These findings are important as recent estimates suggest that up to half of persistent carbon in soil comes from residuals of dead microbes, particularly of fungi (Liang et al. 2019).

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Conservation of Wood Inhabiting Fungi by Reintroduction

Lorin von Longo-Leibenstein

In biodiversity conservation, fungi have been greatly underrepresented, particularly in proportion to the threatened number of species. Fungi must be considered in holistic ecosystem protection, given its significant role.

Fungi spread primarily through spores, and recent research has shown that fragmentation and anthropogenic habitat changes can cause severe limitations to this dispersal. Without intentional reintroduction, some species of fungi have little hope of reaching their previous ranges, even after the habitat is protected.

I will talk about the approaches used in recent fungal reintroduction research to introduce cultured fungi to dead-wood. This includes in-situ methods where there are appropriate natural logs or trees, or, as in my current doctoral research project, ex-situ on freshly harvested logs which can be brought to the reintroduction site when they are ready to produce fruit bodies. Context will be provided for choosing which method is most appropriate for various fungal species and conservation sites.

Mushroom/Museum/Metabolism: Notes from an Ongoing Open-Ended Artistic Research Process

Martin Grünfeld

At museums around the globe, preservation practices aim to stabilize objects in authentic material states sometimes designated as their “true nature”. Meanwhile, the absolute Others of museums – heritage eaters – are suppressed as unwelcome metabolizers. But what if we see other species as potentials? In this talk, I present an ongoing project at Medical Museion in Copenhagen – The Living Room – where we collaborate across conservation science, artistic practice and humanities research to cultivate other lifecycles of objects and organisms at the museum. We develop practices of caring beyond saving, by deliberately reawakening collections from their metabolic slumber. In our practice, mushrooms have played crucial planned and serendipitous roles, shaping our exhibition and research with us. Drawing on our transdisciplinary and multi-species collaborations, I will discuss how mushrooms have kept our artistic process open reshaping it in uncontrollable and uncertain ways and showing us how decomposition does not necessarily entail loss.

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ANTHROPO a story about fungi in four parts (2019)

A film by Morgaine Lee

ANTHROPO a story about fungi in four parts (2019) is an exploration of four major themes that emerged during my research on fungi for my undergraduate honours project; anthropocentrism, anthropomorphism, anthropology, and anthropocene. Through the ‘anthropo’ lens, this film explores the deeply entangled worlds of humans and fungi and invites us to consider the ways we tell stories about fungal worlds in the context of climate disaster. If we recognize the lively and agentive lifeways of fungi, while simultaneously valuing their usefulness to humans — what does this do? Delving into the worlds of fungi asks us to unpack our assumptions about our relationship with the worlds around us and challenge human exceptionalism. What is our relationship to fungi? Why does it matter?

Link to the film: https://vimeo.com/morgainelee/anthropo