Fun Fungi Factoids

Portobello, Button, and White (Cremini) Mushrooms are all the same species, Agarics bosporus.

Portobello mushrooms are filled with more potassium than a banana, and two Portobello mushrooms will give you half your daily niacin needs.

Recent studies from Harvard University show that some mushrooms can actually generate their own wind, pushing their spores up to four inches up and sideways.

There’s about 80 different species of Bioluminescent Mushrooms. Bioluminescence is when a plant or fungi naturally produces their own light. This requires a compound called oxyluciferin that, when paired with an enzyme and oxygen, releases light. This is also what fireflies use to light themselves at night. Some mushrooms run on circadian rhythms; others glow all the time. The latest glow-in-the-dark species, discovered in India, is a fragile mushroom that grows on decaying bamboo and glow so brightly that the locals call them “electric mushrooms” and use them as natural torches.

Mushrooms are the only produce source of vitamin D and can absorb vitamin D when exposed to UV light sources like the sun. Some sun grown mushrooms have more than enough vitamin D for our daily recommended allowance.

Every year, over 2,000 new species of fungi are discovered.

Over 215 species of fungi are known to be hallucinogenic and over 350 species of fungi are edible. 

Human feet are home to nearly 200 types of fungi. Although they live all over our bodies, the heel has over 80 types, between the toes are 40 species, and beneath toenails are over 60. Yuk.

Mycologists have categorized and named a mere 10% of all living mushroom species. More than 90% of the estimated 2.2 - 3.8 million fungi in the world are currently unknown to science.

There are over 120,000 classified types of fungi. 

Fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. Fungi take in nutrients from organic matter, unlike plants that produce their food through photosynthesis. Fungi also expel waste products and CO2, just like we do.

The largest living organism on the planet is a single honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) living in the Malheur National Forest, in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. It’s around 3.5 miles wide, occupies an area as big as 1,665 football fields, extends an average of three feet into the ground and is at least 2,400 years old. Until this one was discovered, the largest known organism was another Armillaria ostoyae found in 1992 in Washington State. It covers 1,500 acres near Mount Adams.

Fungi Allow Trees to Talk to Each Other. Mycorrhizal fungi's mycelial network facilitates the sharing of nutrients and also information between plants and trees of different species. In 1997 Prof Suzanne Simard realized that trees were talking to each other using mycorrhizal networks and coined the term “Wood Wide Web.” The vast networks of mycelium allow trees to share nutrients and also serve to warn each other about droughts, pests and diseases. 

Mushrooms can be used alone or combined with other ingredients to make  a myriad of beautiful natural dyes.  You can produce almost any color imaginable using different combinations of mushrooms and solvents. When combined with ammonia, chanterelles give you muted yellow, oyster mushrooms a grey-green, hen of the woods an orange, puffballs a rust red, lobster mushrooms a bright pink, turkey tail a brown and reishi a rust color.

More than 50 types of mushrooms can digest plastic. Scientists discovered the first fungus that could digest polyurethane plastic in 2011 and another in 2017. Since then, they have discovered more than 50 others. 

More than 350 million years ago, when all land plants were only a few feet high, towering mushrooms 24 ft tall and 3 ft wide dotted the landscape. Chemical analysis of a fossil found in Saudi Arabia shows that the 20 ft tall organism was a fungus that became extinct some 350 million years ago. 

In 1991 hikers found a 5,300-year-old, mummified body in a melting glacier in the Italian Alps. Researchers named the iceman Otzi, and he has provided useful insights into how people lived. Interestingly he carried two different types of mushrooms with him, indicating that humans have known how to use mushrooms for thousands of years. He carried two pieces of birch polypore (Piptoporus betulinus) separately on leather thongs. And several pieces of tinder polypore (Fomes fomentarius) in a leather bag. 

In hieroglyphics from over 4600 years ago, ancient Egyptians referred to mushrooms as plants of immortality and believed they were a gift from the God Osiris. They were so revered that commoners were not allowed to touch them, and only royalty ate mushrooms.