Mycelium Running

How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

A manual for healing the earth and creating sustainable forests through mushroom cultivation, featuring mycelial solutions to water pollution, toxic spills, and other ecological challenges.

- Mycotechnology is part of a larger trend toward using living systems to solve environmental problems and to restore ecosystems.

- Includes mycological projects for children (and kids at heart).

- More than 50 full-color photographs of mushrooms, mycelium, mycotechnology in action, growing techniques, and so on.

- Provides detailed how-tos for growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms--allies to the immune systems of both humans and our planet.

Topics include techniques for germinating spares, transplanting wild mycelium, and creating natural spawn.

More mushrooms, less pollution! Yes, you heard right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment.

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 fungi expert Paul Stamets has discovered is that mycelium also breaks down hydrocarbons —the base structure in many pollutants. So, for instance, when soil contaminated with diesel oil is inoculated with strains of oyster mushroom mycelia, the soil loses its toxicity in just eight weeks.

In MYCELIUM RUNNING, Stamets discusses this revolutionary trend in mushroom cultivation and provides tips for choosing the appropriate species of fungi for various environmental purposes.

Dimensions: 8.96" L x 7.5" W
Details: Paperback, 340 pages
Author: Paul Stamets

About Paul Stamets

Paul Stamets has been a mycologist and mushroom enthusiast since the late 1970s. He is a pioneer in the cultivation of both Psilocybe and edible mushrooms and is credited with the discovery of four new mushroom species. He has written five books on mushroom cultivation, use and identification and speaks at mycological conferences around the world. His book "Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World" is the current definitive guide on the topic.

An author of many articles and scholarly papers, Paul sees the ancient old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest as a resource of incalculable value, especially in terms of its fungal genome. Paul often describes his vision of a deeply interconnected world environment and believes that a deeper knowledge of fungi can solve many of the world's pollution problems. He has been quoted saying "mushrooms will save the world" and has coined the term "mycoremediation" to describe the use of fungus to clean up environmental problems and absorb toxins.

He is a dedicated hiker and explorer, with a passion to preserve, protect, and clone as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible. He is also the founder and president of Fungi Perfecti, a business selling mushroom cultivation and related products and working towards Stamets's goals.