Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World

More mushrooms, less pollution! Yes, you heard right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment and mushroom expert Paul Stamets explains how in MYCELIUM RUNNING, a groundbreaking manual for saving the world through mushroom cultivation.The science goes like this: fine filaments of cells called mycelium, the fruit of which are mushrooms, already cover large areas of land around the world. As the mycelium grows, it breaks down plant and animal debris, recycling carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements in the creation of rich new soil.What Stamets has discovered is that the enzymes and acids that mycelium produces to decompose this debris are superb at breaking apart hydrocarbons - the base structure common to many pollutants. So, for instance, when diesel oil - contaminated soil is inoculated with strains of oyster mycelia, the soil loses its toxicity in just eight weeks.The science is both simple and brilliant, and in MYCELIUM RUNNING, Stamets