posted 15 years ago
Paul Stamets also talks of infecting trees with parasitic fungi to protect it from a worse parasitic fungi. He has experimented in the petri dish in the laboratory putting different parasitic fungi together to see which out grow which and some of the tree parasites that are not so very bad for trees out grow the honey fungus say that is very bad for trees.
If you have trees being attacked by fungi inoculate them with other fungi, I have tried it by making a mash of fungi with mud and tie plastered on the trunk of my apple trees. THere are other ways of inoculating trees paul stamets gives variouse methods to see if you can get a benign fungi to inhabit the tree instead of a mortal one . I include a suggestion or two of his for doing this, off hand, without rereading the book to find them all.
Chaga, inonotus obliquus, I think that is the mushroom on a trunk in hte photo posted by Paul Wheatons in these forums, photo of a sinister looking growth with black bits and other coloured bits. Paul Stamets met a man who had cured chestnut blight with paste of this mushroom held on to the trunk of the trees with gauze.
Sparassis crispa, Cauliflower Mushroom.that Paul Stamets uses in an experiment to try to cure honey fungus infecting trunks round Wood with this fungi that looks like a cauliflower. He gives ways of infecting trunks in his book, "Mycelium Running".
Trametes versicolor, turkey tail fungi. THis fungi has has a lot of medicinal uses against many types of tumors according to Stametes. He says it is faster growing and so overtakes parasitic fungi in the lab and thinks it could be used to inoculate a quantity of stumps that would form a sort of "fungi break" against parasitic fungi in a wood, my words and interpretion of what he said, he seems to want a turkey tail stump clearing, where trees are threatened by parasitic fungi. The orietals make a tea of this. It can be confused with one or two other mushrooms.
Stamets sometimes mentions doubts about stopping parasitic fungi instead of letting them do their damnedest and so renewing the soil .agri rose macaskie.