How a carnivorous mushroom poisons its prey

I love the specificity of the 9 million figure, 1.5 billion years ago.

You set me off on some reading to find out more as it seems so interesting, but I can't find a detailed figure, so I like exactness your estimate provides.

Amazing to consider what the common ancestor was like and also what our animal ancestors were like at that time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_fungi

> 9 million years after plants, some 1.5 billion years ago.

This sentence has an unbelievably high temporal resolution. Can you provide a source of that?

That's an unreasonable level of precision to infer from the data available now, let alone what was possible in 1998 when that estimate was made. In fact, there's ongoing debate as to whether fungi split first from all other eukaryotes, or opisthokonts (incl. fungi and animals) split from all other eukaryotes (incl. plants)

Morels here in Europe are priced insanely high, only a bit below black truffles. For a good reason I must say, if well prepared they taste properly awesome.

Mushrooms in general is a very fleeting thing. For instance, when I take soil from the garden inside and use for planting it's not uncommon for a tiny mushroom to suddenly sprout, bloom, and wilt in less than a day.

Now I need to know what Morel mushrooms taste like...

Yes quite frustrating I had morels pop up on my property once -- which I also noticed while mowing -- and then they never returned to the same spot. So delicious.

I remember as a kid finding a large puffball mushroom in the woods near my house, and brought it home and my dad made a delicious stew with it. Every year I went back to the same area and never found one again.

I don't trust my ability to discern poisonous from benign varieties so I just leave the all where they're at and let them finish out their days in peace.

Years ago, before I ever developed a taste for mushrooms, I cut down a eucalyptus in my yard. Next year I had a couple of Morels pop up through the gravel near the stump. Never saw them again, and I lived there another decade or so.

All three of those are unsuitable due to Omega 6 content. Coconut oil and Olive oil are perfectly fine for frying mushrooms slowly in a pan at medium or low heat.

You're worried about hitting the smoke point, which would impart foul taste to the food, but its unlikely to happen with any competent cook.

That's a very common misconception and a stubborn myth: https://youtu.be/l_aFHrzSBrM

I fry mushrooms (and many other things) in olive oil all the time. It works great, tastes great and as long as you use extra virgin oil, doesn't create any more harmful substances than using rapeseed or sunflower seed oil, probably a lot fewer actually.

You can even deep fry in it, which some celebrated chefs do.

This is more about the preservation method than the contents. The botulism bacteria clostridium botulinumis is anaerobic, so it spreads most frequently in very low oxygen environments, like canning.

A squeeze bottle is unlikely to provide that environment in the medium term. It will likely have too much oxygen exposure.

Tetanus is another example of anaerobic bacteria that's unlikely to occur unless you encounter a low oxygen environment (like a rusty nail underground). A cut or puncture from something exposed to open air is very unlikely to give you tetanus.

Primarily indoor cultivation of oysters (most cost effective), but also lion's mane and shiitake in lower quantities along with a lot of screwing around with other species for fun. I began construction of my small scale farm just before the pandemic started looking serious (~December 2019), and my business plan was reliant on getting higher-end restaurants as customers (which have fared poorly during this). So it's been somewhat on pause, but I'm hoping things clear up soon, as I've been gathering some nice equipment for good prices over the last year (in large part due to covid, ironically).

It would be great to be able to do assays for protein content at home or for nearly free at a lab to work towards better genetics. An ~86g or "one cup" serving of raw oysters supposedly has around ~3g, and it's worth noting that a raw cup cooks down to maybe a quarter cup or less, which is probably comparatively substantial for those that don't consume meat. The Vitamin D content is also noteworthy, as apparently they're the only considerable source of this in the produce aisle (which I didn't fully appreciate until binge researching last night).