4 ms·
An unstoppable mushroom is tearing through North American forests
- ragall 7mo agoHere's one for "The last of us". The fungi will get us all.
- RealityVoid 7mo agoIn Interstellar as well, I think. The blight felt like a similar fungi.
- jsmo 7mo agoTIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus_citrinopileatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleurotus_citrinopileatus
- doodlebugging 7mo agoThe iNaturalist.org map tab could help you determine whether it has been found in your area. [0] I was hoping it had not made it to Texas since it was reported mostly in the NE US but it looks like some people have started cultivating it here and it may have escaped cultivation sometime during the last few years. Considering that it is an invasive fungus that is known to degrade all the natives in the area it should be no surprise that the questions about whether the fungus was found growing on a grow block are rarely or never answered in the Texas reports. This could be due to the questions being asked by researchers trying to identify spread mechanisms from posts that are several years old. The original poster may not respond either because they don't remember or they are not as active as they used to be. I think there are 8 reports in the state today and at least one is obviously in a grow medium of sawdust. [1] The fact that people placed most of their sitings on parks instead of home gardens when more than one case clearly shows a residential setting may suggest that they are growing something that they know can escape but they would like others to think they found it in the wild so it isn't their problem. I have a great natural environment for them with several live oak widowmakers standing dead for around 25 years. I have not seen any yellow mushrooms though, yet. I think the native mulch industry in Texas will probably be their main spread vector since hardwoods are mulched locally and sold all over the state. As far as I know there are fewer restrictions on mulch sales from infected areas than there are on firewood sales across county lines. I think mulch may incorrectly be classified as compost in this case where the assumption is that there has been large scale degradation sterilization of weed seeds, fungal spores, etc due to decomposition temperatures. [0]https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/504060-Pleurotus-citrinopileatus#map-tab https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/504060-Pleurotus-citrinopil... [1]https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/163199817 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/163199817
- neomantra 7mo ago2026 was already quite interesting and now I have marked “Unstoppable Carnivorous Mushroom” on my Bingo Card.
- coreyh14444 7mo agoWikipedia: "The Last of Us is an action-adventure video game series and media franchise created by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.[a] The series is set in a post-apocalyptic United States ravaged by cannibalistic humans infected by a mutated fungus in the genus Cordyceps."
- rwmj 7mo agoI don't recall if The Triffids were delicious when fried in a little butter.
- abcd_f 7mo agoThe good news is that's edible and apparently tastes good.
- voidUpdate 7mo agoSame with Kudzu, and apparently that's an unstoppable plant too
- gessha 7mo agoUnstoppable until you acquire a bunch of goats.
- trekkie99 7mo agohttps://youtu.be/ZcJjMnHoIBI https://youtu.be/ZcJjMnHoIBI
- Pine_Mushroom 7mo agoI had a mushroom farm in Northern Michigan some years ago and we grew Golden Oysters, among other species. I think our winters are too cold for them to really establish themselves, but I was hearing reports of them 'going native' in Southern Michigan as long ago as 15 years. Like the farmer in the article, I also wondered about the apparent lack of effort in growing native species. My area has a wonderful native oyster Pleurotus populinus; exceptional in taste compared to other oysters, but I have never heard of anyone cultivating them.
- 3yr-i-frew-up 7mo agoI've been thinking about farming in Michigan. If global warming takes off, we should have a nice environment and plenty of water to grow... I just can't imagine doing agriculture in 2026. I have a masters in Mechanical Engineering and 2 decades of experience. It just seems like something for uneducated people.
- ux266478 7mo agoWhy do you think that?
- s5300 7mo ago[dead]
- Pine_Mushroom 7mo agoMichigan already has a pretty great environment for agriculture. I used to always hear we were second only to California in terms of output. If current climate disruptions continue(we've had two "once in a lifetime" catastrophic ice storms just this past year in my area) I may searching for 'greener pastures' myself.
- chucksta 7mo agoThere are all kinds of degrees for farming
- 83 7mo agoModern farming is much closer to science and engineering than most realize. Rowcropping in particular is heavily reliant on gps, soil chemistry, and genetics to put the right seed, in the right soil, with the right nutrients to maximize output.
- comrade1234 7mo agoA company grows these (and other mushrooms) in a warehouse here in Zurich to supply restaurants and grocery stores, which is probably one of the reasons these mushrooms are now found in the wild. I "hunt" (in German you use the verb "collect/gather") mushrooms in the forests around Zurich and I haven't seen these yet. They also don't appear in my Pilzfürher app specific to Switzerland. But I have heard they are here. From pictures I've seen of them in the wild I might dismiss them from a distance because I could mix them up with two common yellow mushrooms here - one poisonous. (I'm going out to search for morels this weekend)
- endgame 7mo agoThe verb I've most commonly heard for this activity in English is "forage". What's the equivalent German word?
- saltybytes 7mo agoThank you for clarifying! The German term is "Pilze sammeln" which literally translates to: collect mushrooms. There are many dialects of the German language - where I'm from, we would use "Schwammerl suchen" ("Schwammerl" as another term for "Pilz(e)"). This literally translates to: searching for mushrooms.
- tharkun__ 7mo ago"sammeln" can have multiple translations. "Collect" would be more like "einsammeln". In the context of "Pilze sammeln", you'd use "forage". You forage for food.
- taskforcegemini 7mo agoand "Schwammerl" is even a term people use for other people
- genthree 7mo ago"Mushroom hunting" is a fairly common phrase in English, too. It appears to have the top-level title for the page about that activity, on Wikipedia, even (mushroom foraging, mushroom picking, and mushrooming are all given as alternative terms) Plus it's the title of a song on the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, so it has that going for it.
- b00ty4breakfast 7mo agoWonder if I'll be able to add a new entry to the list of "mushrooms that supposedly grow in my region but cannot be located within 100 sq miles of my home" soon.
- 3yr-i-frew-up 7mo agoWonder if this will have the Wolf phenomena: Where wolf populations explode until there is no food left.
- Windchaser 7mo agoFor the most part, these mushrooms eat dead trees, so
- close04 7mo agoI often read about invasive species from a Western point of view and some of the most aggressive and hard to keep under control species come from Asia. Is the Asian ecosystem equally invaded by Western species? Are forests, gardens, or lakes in Asia overrun by European carp and grey oyster mushrooms? Or is there something about the environment and ecosystem in Asia that makes those species uniquely invasive and resistant? For example the Japanese knotweed evolved to grow on the side of volcanoes and survive the occasional lava flow. It's a uniquely harsh environment which prepares it for thriving in any "gentle" garden in the world. But the mushrooms didn't evolve in any particularly bad environment, so why are these species outcompeting local ones? Why are they so fit for a new environment? I know I have some selection and survivorship bias because I only know of the species that made it, not the ones which try to invade and fail so that's why I'm curious if this is a special situation, or more or less expected because a known percentage of species from any part of the world end up outcompeting local species from another.
- claytongulick 7mo agoI tried to read TFA to learn about what's going on. It's an article about an invasive species of mushroom, right? I'd like to be informed. The first sentence is: "The razor blade of the newly unpacked surgical scalpel glints in the late Autumn light." So I just immediately stopped reading. This style of writing is exhausting and too common. It's an article about mushrooms, not a spy action thriller. It feels like there had been some shift over the past decade that has been pushing / encouraging this style of writing, and I'm not sure what's caused it or what the solution is. It's getting to the point that I'll need to use an LLM to summarize any article I care about to just extract the relevant info. That would be particularly ironic if it was an LLM that generated the article.
- ausbah 7mo agoi would peg it as “new yorker syndrome”. every story needs to have an e2e narrative mixed into the info dumping. fun to read but lots of time
- pixl97 7mo ago> and I'm not sure what's caused it Why aren't you? The vast majority of writers at the end of the day write these stories to sell them. The old venues that sold advertising to places where you would read the stories you are talking about are long dead. Google, et al, have sucked up all that money making them a trillion dollars. Now anyone that wants to sell a story is left fighting for pennies on clickbait.
- dade_ 7mo agoI was hoping the mushroom grew razor blades, but immediately disappointed.
- claytongulick 7mo agoLovecraft himself couldn't have imagined such a horror.
- briandw 7mo agoI would have thought all the fungus had long ago traveled around the world? Don’t they move easily on the wind or on items shipped from place to place.
- ProllyInfamous 7mo agoAirplanes and cargo ships have removed all the geographic isolations this world once had. Fungus, although exploratory, definitely prefer ideal environments (and inherently are co-operative, at least form a intra-species hyphae POV) — why would they attempt wandering across oceans/mountains/deserts (yes, certain fungi inhabit these niche environments).
- CamelCaseCondo 7mo agoWind is not a homogeneous movement, there are highways and slow lanes. Spores (as from fungi), pollen (from wind pollinators such as grasses) and dust-like seeds (e.g. from orchids) are ideal nucleation points for condensation. So when wind is forced up (because of changes in the terrain) these are the particles that get filtered out: either physically as precipitation or functionally by freezing. For those interested, there have been a number of studies that put numbers on the action radius. When genetic manipulation of wind pollinators (e.g. wheat, corn and others grasses) came in vogue they needed to put a number on the dispersal of modified pollen.
- IAmBroom 7mo agoThe author starts out depicting themselves as some sort of cloning scientist... and clearly not only isn't that, but isn't very informed on mushrooms. Many, if not most, wood-decaying mushrooms (those that break down dead wood) rely on killing nematodes to supply nitrogen, which is otherwise short supply in their diet. They use adaptations that resemble glue pads, tripwire nooses, or even hydro-pumped harpoons to trap the "helpless nematodes" (oh, the humanity! Won't somebody think of the worms?). It's not rare; it just wasn't known until circa 2000. And it's not unique to the invading fungus; our native oysters were where this discovery was first made. Spare me the "poor defenseless prey animal" BS, and tell me about the known or suspected ecological impact - the reduction in fungal diversity is relevant, at least.
- robocat 7mo agoSilly aside, even New Zealand has exported an invasive species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_flatworm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_flatworm
- amenhotep 7mo agoYou've put "helpless nematodes" in quotes despite the article literally not once saying that. It says: > Oyster mushrooms also happen to be one of the few carnivorous mushrooms – preying mercilessly on nematode worms. That's it. That's the one sentence related to the topic. You have imagined things to get mad about.
- salad-tycoon 7mo agoI’ve enjoyed reading up and growing various mushrooms. They vary from tasty, medicinal, to deadly. Lions mane is a blast to grow and tastes pretty good, some say lobster, and you can cook them like steak. Plus they just look awesome. Supposedly has various health benefits too. The scariest stories, beyond the usual “oops I ate a death cap,” to me are people growing oyster mushrooms and finding their house infested. Oyster mushrooms popping their heads out of every crack and nook in bathrooms, crawl spaces, and kitchens. Basically any crevice with moisture. []https://www.reddit.com/r/mushroomID/comments/rlozpo/these_grew_out_of_my_wall_can_someone_tell_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mushroomID/comments/rlozpo/these_gr... []https://old.reddit.com/r/microbiology/comments/lwpjas/theres_huge_mushrooms_growing_out_of_my_kitchen/ https://old.reddit.com/r/microbiology/comments/lwpjas/theres...
- krunck 7mo agoWe are constantly learning more about how utterly vital fungi are to all the various land ecosystems on the planet. I fear that we could see some ecosystems collapse due to the large and fast changes in their fungal makeup.
- IAmBroom 7mo agoThe larger picture is: we humans are fighting an oncoming tsunami (exponential fungal growth) with sandbags. And puny ones, at that. It's the same with any invading species. Go pluck all the Japanese honeysuckle and knotweed (not the fault of the Japanese, BTW: we planted them!), kudzu, golden oysters, garlic mustard, invasive rose, and so on that you like. Smash all the spotted lanternflies in your entire city! Etc. Those populations will barely hiccup, and then continue. We have no real plan, maybe not even a real ability, to stop any of them. They are establishing themselves high up in native populations, largely due to lack of controlling pressures (generally a lack of predator/grazers, and parasites). We're in a painful transition point, spurred on by human travel and long-range commerce (shipping by ground, sea, and air). Even if we began (somehow!) bio-filtering everything we shipped right now, it's too late. There will eventually be a new balance, or at least a new temporary equilibrium. Unfortunately, a lot of things we like are going to be displaced or even extincted by the pressure of this rapid change, whether it's songbirds or oranges or a significant percentage of the human species.
- satisfice 7mo agoAt last, a story about an invasion of delicious aliens!