Saturday January 09, 2010
Return of the Fungi
Andy Isaacson
Mother Jones
In the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest grows a bulbous, prehistoric-looking mushroom called agarikon. It prefers to colonize century-old Douglas fir trees, growing out of their trunks like an ugly mole on a finger. When I first met Paul Stamets, a mycologist who has spent more than three decades hunting, studying, and tripping on mushrooms, he had found only two of these unusual fungi, each time by accident—or, as he might put it, divine intervention.
Stamets believes that unlocking agar i kon's secrets may be as important to the future of human health as Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillium mold's antibiotic properties more than 80 years ago.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 02:48 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry