Solar Eclipse This Summer, Part 1: Planning

Have you ever wondered why the only fresh mushrooms you can get in stores are button, cremini, and portabello (all different varieties and stages of Agaricus bisporus)? Or why the fancy mushrooms, like morels (Morchella spp.) and chanterelles (Cantharellus spp.) are generally only available dried? And why are those dried mushrooms so expensive anyway? Can’t they just plant them in a field like wheat? To understand the answer to these questions, you need to know a few things about what mushrooms really are.

A long time ago scientists classified all organisms as either “plants” or “animals” largely based on whether they had a means of locomotion. For this reason, mushrooms (a.k.a. fungi), were classified as “plants”. Soon, however, scientists began to realize that fungi were not actually like plants at all: they produced spores instead of seeds, and most importantly, they weren’t green. Turns out fungi don’t produce their own food like plants do; they need to “eat” plants or animals-either living or deceased. In this way, they are actually more like animals.

Some fungi are parasites on plants, animals, protists or other fungi. You may be familiar with fungal crop parasites like corn smut (Ustilago maydis), rusts (e.g. Puccinia spp.), powdery mildew (e.g. Podosphaera spp.), ergot (Claviceps purpurea) or the infamous potato blight (Phytophthora infestans). In fact, some parasitic fungi even feed on people. Ever had jock itch (Tinea cruris), athlete’s foot (Tinea pedis) or a “yeast” (Candida albicans) infection? If so, a fungus was feeding on you. Gross!

However, some fungi are what botanists call “mycorrhizal”, literally Latin for “fungus root”. Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic associations with various wild plants, often trees. The hyphae wrap around plants’ roots and absorb some of the sugar that the plant produces via photosynthesis. In exchange, the fungus provides the tree with water and hard to get nutrients like phosphorus. So ultimately the relationship seems to be beneficial to both parties. Many of the wild mushrooms that we love are mycorrhizal and associated with conifers like pine (Pinus spp.): pine mushrooms (aka Matsutake) (Tricholoma matsutake), delicious milkcaps (Lactarius deliciosus) and porcinis (Boletus edulis). Chanterelles are associated with several species of conifers and deciduous trees. Truffles (Tuber spp.), on the other hand, prefer deciduous trees like oaks (Quercus spp.) and hazelnuts (Corylus spp.). Some morels (Morchella spp.) will grow on decaying organic matter like the button mushrooms but other species are mycorrhizal.

Image: Delicious milkcaps (Lactarius deliciosus) are mycorrhizal associates of pine trees. ©MM

So any attempt to cultivate these species would require growing a forest of appropriate tree hosts, inoculating the soil and hoping that they will eventually produce mushrooms. Although this sounds simple, there are many mysterious things going on in the soil that we barely understand and the factors that trigger mushroom production are one of them. In my next blog, I will be exploring some of the fascinating relationships between mycorrhizal fungi and Manitoba’s wild plants.

When Manitoba became part of Canada in 1870 the stage was set for one of the largest land transformations in history. In the last 150 years nearly all of Manitoba’s wild prairies fell to the plough. The little patches that remain as ranch land, private nature preserves, and federal and provincial crown lands are home to a suite of increasingly rare organisms, among them two spectacular prairie orchids: Western Prairie Fringed Orchid (Platanthera praeclara) and Small White Lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium candidum).  Models of these two species are on display in the Manitoba Museums’ Legacies of Confederation: A New Look at Manitoba History exhibit.

In addition to their very specific habitat requirements these orchids produce seeds that are so tiny that there is virtually no nutrition available for young seedlings. In order to grow they need to form an association with a special fungus, called a mycorrhiza, which will help them get water and nutrients from the soil. The dependence of these two orchids on insect pollinators and soil fungus, along with the loss of habitat, has led to their endangerment.

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when people thought that species extinction was impossible. Humanity underestimated the power that our technology gave us over nature, and to some degree we still do. A conservation ethic did not really emerge until it was clear that there were no “lost worlds” left where rare species might still linger. The extinction of several Canadian bird species including the Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis) and Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), largely due to overhunting, finally made Canadians understand our destructive capabilities and helped inspire the modern wildlife conservation movement. One of the benefits of confederation has been our collective will to ensure that some of Canada’s forests, tundra, prairies, lakes and ocean habitats are protected for all Canadians to benefit from–the 2-legged and the 4-legged and even the ones with no legs at all.

Tasting is something we do everyday but many of the things we think we know about taste are actually wrong. So let the debunking begin!

Fact: Your sense of taste involves your tongue AND your nose. When you are sick with a cold, food doesn’t taste very good. This is not because your taste buds aren’t working – it is because your nose isn’t working. To test this, close your eyes, plug your nose and pop a flavoured candy in your mouth. Can you tell which flavour it is? Then unplug your nose and see if you know. What you are experiencing when you unplug is retronasal olfaction (or smelling the back of the nose). Many flavours in food are released as gases while you chew, which then waft into your nose through the back of your mouth. In fact 80% to 90% of what we “taste” is actually detected by your nose.

Fact: While it is true that many fruits contain sugar, some fruits are not sweet at all. Botanically speaking, a fruit is a structure that contains, or is attached to, one to many seeds-it has nothing to do with what it tastes like. Many things that we call vegetables are actually fruits including avocados, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash. The taste of a fruit is influenced by the kind of animal that normally disperses it. Since some animals like juicy, bitter, sour, or fatty tastes, not all fruits are sweet.

Vegetables (defined as roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, and leaves) may be bitter due to the presence of toxins that discourage animals from eating them. However, humans have bred modern vegetables to be less bitter (and therefore less toxic). For example, wild carrot root is bitterer than modern varieties. Unfortunately, breeding out the bitter compounds (which are often natural pesticides) and increasing the sweet ones make our crop plants more desirable to insect pests.

At the Museum’s recent Surviving the Apocalypse Night participants were asked a variety of questions about the nutritional value of certain foods. Sadly, very few people knew that you can make a beverage high in vitamin C from…Christmas trees!

The Indigenous peoples of North America have long known of the health-giving properties of some cone-bearing (also called evergreen) trees. In Canada, First Nations peoples drank an herbal tea of evergreen needles to ward off scurvy, usually in winter when fresh fruits and vegetables were hard to come by. This simple remedy was not known by early British and French explorers, who often succumbed to this disease. Scurvy causes weakness, gum disease, impairs healing, and eventually leads to fever, convulsion, and death. Symptoms set in after about a month of low to no vitamin C intake. The explorer Jacques Cartier was told about a scurvy remedy by the Indigenous people he encountered in eastern Canada, who felt pity for the suffering Europeans (see more here). Cartier was so impressed at the ability of the tea to cure scurvy that he called the tree species an “arbre de vie” or “tree of life”.

On the east coast, European settlers began making an alcoholic version of this beverage by adding spruce needles to molasses (from the Caribbean) and yeast to make spruce beer. By 1738, George Spence, the Hudson’s Bay Company surgeon in Fort Albany, Ontario, reported making and providing spruce beer to HBC employees as an anti-scorbutic (click here to learn more). This knowledge was eventually passed on to the British Military by Sir Joseph Banks, who encountered the beverage when he was botanizing in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1766. Captain James Cook brought casks of this beer on board his ships in the late 1700’s (along with various other foods, such as citrus fruits) and did not lose a single man to scurvy!   If you’re so inclined, you can click here for a recipe for spruce beer.

Below is a simple identification key to Manitoba’s wild cone-bearing trees. To use it, select the statement (a or b) that best describes the plant. Continue selecting statements until you come to the name of a species. Then double check the identity by consulting a field guide or reputable website. Please note that there are some exotic cone-bearing trees planted in urban areas, which may not be in this key.