Slightly OT: chemical treatment of pine

[Ma_Huang]

Bees, this one is slightly OT because I am actually trying to cultivate woodloving shrooms, but there is a chemistry angle. It has been alleged that the turpene-rich resin in pine trees is a natural fungicide, and consequently inhibits shroom growth until the wood has aged or composted somewhat. (There is a slight inconsistency here, in that shrooms are one of the few living things that are capable of composting wood in the first place). I have some pine shavings from a woodworking place, and am contemplating methods of artificial ageing. So you look up the Merck, and it is not surprising to see that a number of NP solvents are likely to extract turpenes. But is this all there is to it? Things I am wondering here are whether EtOH would extract too much, whether heat would help, whether pre-freezing (to destroy cell walls would help), etc. Ta in advance.

[spectralmagic]

Don't waste your time with pine, cedar, etc.  My only successes with wood-loving varieties (such as P. Cyanescens) have been few and far between, and used maple & alder as recommended in various 'net literature.  In my region of the world those two are almost weeds...  easy to get.

One thing I've tried, and which almost worked, was using shredded unbleached (and cleaned) cardboard... it's been fairly heavily processed and so contains little bad stuff... also contains little good stuff, so it needs to be supplemented in some way.
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[paranoid]

Don't quote me out on this, but my belief is that a likely reason for the preference of certain shrooms species for pine wood is due to several factors.

1- It is more competitive in that niche then other similar organisms that colonize decomposing pine wood in that climate (maybe).  This certainly wouldn't mean thought that it grows best or even well on this medium.

2 - the shrooms probably grow best on rapidly decomposing wood, and subsist not so much by directly breaking down the wood for energy (or which there is little) or nitrogen (of which there is even less) but consuming the organisms which do so in the first place (dead or alive).  Make sense, but I have no reason to believe it.

3 - Perhaps there is some kind of association it normally has with a particular bacteria or fungus normally resident in the dead pine wood, a relationship required for it to properly break down the wood to retrieve the necessary sugars and nitrogen.  This is most likely the answer of these three, but again who knows?  Someone maybe.


I know, ambiguous at best, but, interesting food for thought I suppose.