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why some places never have mushrooms growing


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There is one park I really like, very diverse trees-wise, although oak-dominant...but as many times as I went there, while other parks had mushrooms, there was nothing in this park. Once I found a "chicken", nothing else. I was wondering why that is. The park is adjacent to coast, soil is mostly sandy I guess. I checked both deciduous and coniferous parts of the park, dense and open areas. Nothing.

So, can it be that mushroom spores never made it there? Does it make sense to introduce them there? Or is it the environment that is for some reason not appropriate for mushroom growth? Very hard to believe in the latter reason.

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There could be any number of answers and lots of combinations of answers but the truth is that it is not at all uncommon for some forests to be pretty much mushroom free zones. Here are a few things that you might consider...

=think of mushrooms in terms of being saprobes or alternately forming relationships with some tree or shrub. If your bit of forest is what I call clean (ie almost no dead wood on the ground, no fallen trees etc) then there isnt going to be much food for the saprobes that rotting wood and branches or the underground parts of dead stumps. In really well managed tracts as soon as a tree starts to look a bit sick it gets cut and sold and perhaps decades have passed since a tree has dies naturally and hit the ground.

-Forests that are routinely thinned every few years will have a sparse canopy that lets in sunlight which will dry the soil. Mushrooms dont like dry. That extra sunlight might be warming the soil too much also.

-Not all trees form relationships with mushrooms that fruit aggressively. Where I live for example a pure stand of sugar maple is totally not worth a look. Box elder and ironwood are also pretty useless.

-Mushrooms that grow on the side of dead trees do of course need dead trees so again that well managed tract wont be the place to be looking for oysters.

-Soil type can make a difference as well. Mushrooms tend to like a soil that drains moderately quickly without ponding and without being beach sand. Remember that mushrooms need moisture.

-I think that soil acidity or alkalinity can make a difference as well and that is something that isnt very obvious

-soil could even have a salt content from the ocean.

Then if you combine some of those factors it can magnify effects. I dont think there is any chance at all that there is a place on the planet that hasnt received some spores. Air has been scooped up by satellites in orbit and examined and found to contain fungal spores so the stuff is everywhere. Some forests just dont have the right conditions to fruit mushrooms that get seen and that just has to be accepted I guess in the same way that we accept the fact that some forests fruit mushrooms like crazy.

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I wonder if maybe this park was planted with saplings that were intentionally raised so that no fungus would "contaminate" the roots. I'm not sure, but I think the understanding of the benefits enjoyed when certain tree species acquire mycorrhizal fungal partners may be a fairly recent development. Fungicides may have been used in some parks of cultivated trees. There's a park in a city near where I live that has some massive oak trees. I visit this park occasionally --to play ultimate frisbee-- and now that I'm thinking of it, I can't recall ever seeing a single Russula or Amanita (mycorrhizal types) near the oaks in this park.

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thank you, that all might be reasonable, I'm just reluctant to believe it, the park feels too...mushroomy, if you know what I mean..it's like with a fishing spot...sometimes you just feel there must be fish here...but, facts show otherwise, I'll go there a few times this year just to make sure it wasn't a bad year in that location...

park is not new, at least 50yrs old...they do maintain it, but I saw plenty downed trees there...soil isn't pure sand, but possibly does drain too fast...salt content is also a good point...

I visited other park many times last year, far from ocean, no maintenance whatsoever, same result - a few russulas is all i found, while a park 5 miles away is abundant and diverse...

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Same thing can be true with fishing. Years back, I hiked the high country in the Adirondacks and took along some ultralight fishing gear to try out some of the mountain streams. I camped for a couple nights at Panther Gorge between Mt. Marcy and Big Haystacks, around 3800' asl as I recall. I had been told there were no trout above 3000', due to acid rain. But I wanted to see if this was true. Marcy Brook runs only a few feet away from the lean-to. I spent two hours fishing some of the nicest-looking "trout" water I've ever seen. Nada. Closer to home, our highest area is atop a mountain range, about 2500' asl. A noted trout stream, Mehoopany Creek, has its headwaters in this area. I still remember my first impression when I arrived at this 2.5 mile hike-in creek about 15 years ago, "there's gotta be some trout in this beautiful water." Nada... same problem as in the Adirondacks.

Tasso, thanks for the article. I didn't know about the potential problem with garlic mustard. It has moved into my area during the past 10 years or so.

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Btw, trout opener in PA was a blast this past weekend, even though weather was pretty bad...managed to catch 17 brookies.

I see plenty garlic mustard around here, especially in the park I don't really like, not many mushrooms there, possibly due to the plant spreading.

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