Giant mushrooms. The largest mushroom in the world. There is a security obligation

You can relax in different ways. For some it is reading a book or watching a long-awaited film, for others it is a picnic with noise and barbecue. Standing somewhat apart are people who prefer to spend time in nature in an interesting, if lucky, profitable way. Hunting for animals and/or birds, fishing, mushroom picking. The last type of active pastime in the forest always has its fans. For some, it is enough to admire the autumn forest, breathing in the fresh air, for others, they absolutely need to find the largest mushroom in the world in order to surprise everyone, hang up their photo with a miracle of nature in their hands. , which both neophytes and experienced mushroom pickers can count on when going on a quiet hunt.

Giants of Russia

When talking about picking mushrooms, of course, most people mean definitely edible mushrooms that have a familiar shape, color and delicious smell, and not those varieties that frighten you just by their appearance, and you need to cook them with the care of a chef from Japan who conjures fugu fish

First of all, these are mushrooms whose names are familiar from childhood, and whose collection experience goes back centuries:

• Boletus. The most recently described case of finding a giant specimen, about which there was a short TV report on the Rossiya TV channel, occurred in 2011 in the Omsk region. Alexey Korol, a mushroom picker with considerable experience, found a mushroom with a cap diameter of 36 cm. The height of the giant’s leg is 28 cm, weight is 2.4 kg. What was especially surprising and pleasing about the find was that it turned out not to be wormy.

• Mushroom, which many mushroom pickers consider the only one worthy of pickling. Mentions of preparation methods can be found even in monastery chronicles. By the way, in the West it is considered inedible. The mushroom is very dense, so even with its small size it is quite weighty. Unfortunately, there were no reliable facts about the record load. It is only known that the cap is 25 cm in diameter; almost a kilogram weight is not the limit for it.

• Ryzhik. The second most important mushroom for pickling, but it also has an excellent taste when fried. You can also salt it and bake it over a fire right in the forest. The cap is 20 cm, the weight is about 0.5 kg - the limit for an edible specimen, which no one has ever enjoyed before the mushroom picker.

• Oil can. Those who have at least once tasted the taste of butter potatoes fried with onions, are happy to collect them in clean coniferous forests. This mushroom is not striking in size. Unfortunately, it is highly valued not only by people, but also by forest dwellers, from worms to squirrels. Therefore, you should not wait for record sizes, but send the boletus into the basket.

• The white mushroom or boletus is the dream of many, the king of Russian forests. The mushroom is very dense, with a rich (even dried) smell. There is information about the discovery in 1961 in a forest near Moscow of a porcini mushroom with a 60-centimeter cap, weighing about 11 kg, which is impressive. Today this is the largest white mushroom in the world, but nothing lasts forever, and a new record is waiting for its lucky owner.

Some facts:

• Fungi are living organisms, and not lower plants, as previously thought. At the same time, they combine some characteristics of animals and plants.
• There are more than 100 thousand different species, of which macromycetes are of interest to lovers of quiet hunting.
• These are cap mushrooms with massive fruiting bodies that are so nice to put in a basket. These also include puffballs and tinder mushrooms, which, as they say, are not for everyone. A separate species, a variety of “macromycete” mushrooms, as they like to mindlessly label the find in many photographs, does not exist.
• Of all the others, the only thing of interest to lovers of forest walks is the medicinal birch mushroom - chaga, which is not difficult to find; yeast, which was used to make dough for pies on the road; kombucha, which gives a sour drink that perfectly quenches thirst after a quiet hunt.
• Scientists divide all cap mushrooms, which are of the greatest interest to mushroom pickers, into two more groups: basidiomycetes and marsupials.
• For example, boletus, boletus, milk mushroom, oiler, honey fungus, saffron milk cap are basidial, and the famous truffle and mushrooms with unpleasant names: morel, string - are marsupial mushrooms.

Miracles on a global scale

News about foreign achievements in the search for record mushrooms is also interesting, although it often evokes mixed feelings. But first things first, immediately discarding the “information” with the obvious use of Photoshop about “macromycetes” found all over the world with multi-meter legs, caps, weighing hundreds of kilograms:

• Truffle. A very tasty mushroom, most valued by gourmets, weighing 7 kg was found in the south of Italy. A real record.

• Lingzhi or lacquered tinder fungus. A 7.5-kilogram specimen was found in China. It also grows in Russia - in the warm climate of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. Considering that this medicine of traditional medicine differs little in appearance from birch chaga, with a nutritional value of zero, it is unlikely that it should be included among the contenders for victory.

• Champignon. A specimen weighing 14 kg was found in Italy.

• Raincoats of enormous size - from 0.5 to 1.72 (!) m in diameter, found from Russia, Great Britain to Canada. Since the nutritional and taste value of this bag of spores is very conditional, and, according to the Russian “table of ranks”, among edible mushrooms it is classified in the 4th, last category (little known, rarely collected), it is unlikely that these giants should be considered successful finds, shocked the world.

If we agree with the Guinness Book of Records, then the first place was taken by the Americans, who accidentally discovered a giant mycelium that had lived quietly for 2,500 years, slowly destroying a relict forest in Oregon on an area of ​​880 (!) hectares, with only small fruits on the surface measuring a few centimeters in size.

Armed with the advanced achievements of American propaganda, they awarded it the title of “the largest mushroom in the world” and are now resting on their laurels, while a lot of sites trustingly copy the amazing, exciting story about this “macromycete”. It seems that with the same success the biggest mushroom can be considered what is located under Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus, the Siberian or Far Eastern taiga. Then the scale of records will reach a new level, unprecedented in the United States.

This is a MUSHROOM, or rather, the mycelium of the dark honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae), which develops in the Malheur Forest Reserve in the US state of Oregon. The mycelium of this living creature covers an area of ​​more than 880 hectares, and its age is estimated at 2.4 thousand years.

The largest living organism on the planet is sometimes called the Oregon monster or the honey mushroom monster, and not at all because of its gigantic size. The fact is that the giant mycelium, entangling the roots of trees, causes the death of the latter. And many of the trees in the reserve have already become victims of huge mycelium. By the way, it was thanks to the massive death of trees that the giant was identified.

Attracted by the history of the death of trees, biologists in 1998 were able to determine that the honey fungus mycelium from Oregon is not individual clusters growing throughout the forest, but a gigantic, integral living organism.

Previously, the largest living creature in the world was considered the mycelium of the dark honey fungus, growing in Washington state. Its size was estimated at 600 hectares.

It is possible that there are larger myceliums on our planet, the existence of which is still unknown to scientists.

Here is the story of its discovery:

The find was reported in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research. "The fact that an organism like this has grown in a forest for thousands of years really broadens our view of the forest ecosystem and how it works," said Dr. Katherine Parks, a pathologist at the US Department of Agriculture who conducted the study.

Researchers discovered this giant mushroom in the Malheur National Park, which covers an area of ​​590,000 hectares and consists of highland fields, pine forests and mountain lakes. This territory lies at an altitude of 1200-2750 meters above sea level.

A single organism of such large size has led to new understandings of the role of fungi in forest ecology. It was previously believed that mushrooms similar to honey mushrooms grew in groups within the forest, visible from the air as ring zones of dead trees.

But when researchers collected samples of mushrooms from an area of ​​9.65 square kilometers throughout the Oregon forest, they were tested to be the same mushroom. Scientists have estimated its age to be between 2,000 and 8,500 years old.

"This is a single organism that started growing as a microscopic spore and then spread like a plant," Parks said. “If we could remove all the soil and look at what was left, we would only see one big pile of a single mushroom with all its mycelial filaments that permeate all the soil below the surface.”

Researchers now believe that the fungus is part of a natural cycle of tree regeneration and decline within forests and that it is often present in areas with little tree damage.

Our forestry industry should also think about this problem, since honey mushrooms grow throughout our entire region of Russia. Apparently, the principle of distribution of all honey mushrooms is the same, regardless of their type and habitat area. So, when we go into the forest and collect honey mushrooms, perhaps we put the fruiting bodies of the same mushroom in our basket.

But there are other options:

"Pando" is a clonal colony of aspen poplar (USA, Utah). As scientists have established, 47 thousand stems come from one once living poplar. All 47 thousand stems have a single root system and can be called a single organism, whose mass is 6 thousand tons. The age of "Pando" is 80 thousand years (according to some estimates - up to a million years), which makes it one of the main candidates for the title of the longest-lived organism on the planet.

Clonal colony- this is a group of genetically identical individuals (plants, fungi, bacteria) that grew up in one place and reproduced vegetatively and not sexually. In plants, an individual of such a population is called a ramet. In mushrooms, individuals develop from a common mycelium hidden in the soil. Clonal colonies are common in many plant species. Although some of them reproduce sexually through seeds, reproduction can occur in some cases through underground stolons and rhizomes. Above ground, these plants appear to be separate individuals, so clonal colonies are not always easy to recognize.

It is assumed that for most of Pando's life, it grew under ideal conditions: frequent fires prevented its main competitor, the conifers, from colonizing the area, and climate change from humid to semi-arid prevented the spread of seedlings and attendant competition from young poplars.

During severe fires, the organism survived thanks to the root system, throwing out new shoots on the ashes. Due to its age, Pando was born in a climate very different from today's, and probably last bloomed about ten thousand years ago, according to the OECD report:

Clonal groups of P. tremuloides are quite common in eastern North America but typically occupy no more than 0.1 ha, while groups as large as 80 ha have been observed in Utah (Kemperman and Barnes 1976). Some claim that seedlings have not spread in the western United States since the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago (Einspahr and Winton 1976, McDonough 1985). In fact, some biologists believe that the western lineages may be as old as 1 million years (Barnes 1966, 1975). A single clone, nicknamed "Pando" (Latin for "I spread"), was said to occupy 43 hectares, contain over 47,000 shoots and weigh over 6 million kg, being the largest known organism (Grant et al. 1992, Mitton and Grant 1996) .

The clone covers 43 hectares (107 acres) and has approximately 47,000 stems that die and renew themselves from its roots. The trunks are connected to each other by a root system. The average age of a Pando trunk (or more precisely, shoot) is 130 years, as became clear from the growth rings.

<…>Compared to Pando, who lived according to the most common estimate of 80,000 years, according to the most accepted point of view among anthropologists, Homo sapiens migrated from Africa to Eurasia and Oceania only 40,000 years ago, and to the Americas 10,000 years ago.”

Another candidate for the title of the longest-lived and largest clonal organism on Earth is a colony of Posidonia oceanica south of the island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean Sea. Clonal colony of Posidonia oceanica, 8 km in size. in diameter can be up to 100 thousand years old.

Kira Stoletova

Mushrooms are unique organisms that combine the characteristics of flora and fauna. They differ from plants in that they are not able to form oxygen molecules, and from animals in their inability (with a few exceptions) to move and physiological characteristics. The largest mushrooms are admired by people all over the world.

general information

Today people know more than one hundred thousand species of these organisms. A certain percentage of them bring a lot of benefits to a person. Therefore, in all corners of the planet - in the USA and Russia, in Australia and Brazil - the edible mushroom is the basis of a variety of dishes. The product is used in the following areas:

1. Food sector: winemaking, production of fermented milk products, bakery and confectionery products.
2. Medical industry: penicillin is produced from mushrooms. as well as other medications and antibiotics.

They are partially used in veterinary medicine as medicine, and also as raw materials for the production of medicines.

Unique characteristics

Giant mushrooms, like all others, grow as a collection of cells that gather into a thread of mycelium.

Once this system matures, it creates a pressure of 700-750 t/m². In fungi, threads (hyphae) perform the function of the gastrointestinal tract. In the body of mushrooms there are special enzymes - enzymes that they secrete to destroy large food molecules and consume the necessary substances.

Top giant mushrooms

Biologists note that detecting a huge mushroom is not so difficult.

Some representatives reach large sizes only due to good conditions for their development. The media actively popularize this topic. Therefore, lists have appeared that unite the largest mushrooms in the world:

• 10th place: It is occupied by the puffball mushroom, which is clearly not the largest when compared to the others, but in the UK it is a 100% favorite. He was found by a young girl gardening. The mass of the fruiting body is 2 kg, the cap is 46 cm in diameter.
• 9th place: boletus discovered in Russia on the territory of the Tomsk region. The boletus mushroom is a contender for the title of largest edible mushroom. It is distinguished not only by its cap with a diameter of 36 cm and a weight of 2.4 kg, but also by its color. This specimen, found in Russia, has a brown stem and cap.
• 8th place: lingzhi mushroom, or reishi. In Russia and the CIS countries it is known as the varnished tinder fungus. The largest mushroom in China is lingzhi. Its weight: 7.5 kg, cap size 1 m 7 cm. Lingzhi are unique in that they are actively used in folk medicine. These organisms contain polysaccharides that increase the dynamism of blood cells, thereby increasing immunity levels. In addition, it is characterized by hepatoprotective, anti-allergenic and antioxidant effects. A mushroom was discovered in the provincial city of Hezhou.
• 7th place: a raincoat from Russia, found by a resident of the Perm region in the fall of 2011. This is a large mushroom with a cap diameter of 172 cm, a stem of 50 cm and a weight of 12 kg. This type of mushroom is suitable for consumption, so it was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest edible mushroom in the world.
• 6th place: Italian champignon found in the province of Baria. Its weight is 14 kg. The finder could not carry it in his hands, so he had to use a car to take the find with a large hat to the village. The champignon turned out to be edible.
• 5th place: Chinese macromycete. Another representative that surprises with its parameters. It is distinguished by its non-standard shape (many small caps on one leg) and its size. The diameter of the cap is approximately 100 cm, weight is 15 kg. Scientists have not yet been able to classify it, but it rightfully takes its place on the list of the largest mushrooms in the world.
• 4th place: titanium macromycete. These huge mushrooms are known for their unique characteristics. Two such specimens were discovered in the USA, claiming to be the largest mushroom on the planet. The first was found in 2005 in one of the coffee fields. He weighed 28 kg. The second candidate was found in 2007, his weight was 20 kg, his leg height was 70 cm.
• 3rd place: Canadian macromycete. It, like other representatives of this species, is distinguished by its enormous size. A raincoat of enormous size and weighing 26 kg was found by a local resident during a family walk in the forest. This surprised people so much that they called the mushroom the largest on earth.
• 2nd place: Chinese Fomitiporia ellipsoidea, one of the species of tinder fungi. A huge mushroom was found on the island. Hainan. The hat is 88 cm in diameter, height – 10.8 m, weight – 5 kg. There are few plants on earth that can compare with it. The volume was 400-525 cm³. The peculiarity of this organism is that it develops not outside, but underground.
• 1 place: It is rightfully the largest mushroom in the world, native to the forests of the USA. This living organism belongs to the Armilaria family, whose representatives are distinguished by their impressive parameters. Most of it was beyond human vision. Armillaria ostoyae are macromycetes that are also known as honey fungus. The mycelium is a single organism. It occupied an area of ​​880 hectares in the Oregon National Park. The hyphae of Armillaria ostoyae have grown over an area equivalent to almost 1,700 football fields, so this organism is deservedly called the largest mushroom on the planet.

Irina Selyutina (Biologist):

In addition to the “Oregon Monster” mushroom, there are several other such giant myceliums that really fit the name “monster”:

• Switzerland, national park near the Ofena pass: The dark honey fungus (Armillaria ostoyae) has formed a mycelium with an area of ​​about 35 hectares. The age is at least 1000 years. The mycelium is the oldest in Europe.
• USA, Washington State: in 1992, mycelium was accidentally discovered during research work; according to scientists, the area it occupies is about 600 hectares.

American scientists are now faced with an urgent problem - to learn how to control the growth of the mycelium of the honey mushroom so that it does not destroy huge forest areas. Given its thousands of years of natural growth, this could pose a risk to the ecosystem of Oregon's forests.

Many people are interested in whether it is possible to eat the world's largest mushroom? Researchers from the USA say that you can eat it (especially since the fruiting bodies are of normal size, but the mycelium is huge). And although the mushroom is called honey (or dark), it is better to eat it with a lot of garlic and butter.

Mushroom weighing 600 kg - 10 Largest Mushrooms

Raw porcini mushroom is very tasty! www.grib.tv

So lucky. We found the biggest mushrooms

Conclusion

Mushrooms are an amazing class of living organisms that exist on the planet. It has not been fully studied, so every year the list of giant mushrooms, in which the macromycete of the Armillaria family is the largest mushroom in the world, changes and is supplemented with new representatives.

The largest mushroom in the world, as we know it, was found in 2007 in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Its height was more than 60 centimeters and its weight was 23 kilograms. This is not the only major find in Mexico; in 2008, a local biologist accidentally found a mushroom that weighed more than 20 kilograms.

However, the largest mushroom in size is the mushroom currently located in the American state of Oregon in Malheur National Park. According to experts, its age may be about 2.5 thousand years. Its size is impressive; the large mushroom can be compared to 1,230 football fields. The giant belongs to the species Armilaria ostoyae, which cannot be eaten.

The largest mushroom in the world that can be eaten is a mushroom discovered in 1987 by Canadian Jean Guy Richard. The giant's weight was 22 kilograms and its diameter was 2.64 meters.

In 2011, a large mushroom weighing more than 2 kilograms and 47 centimeters in diameter was discovered in the English county of Staffordshire. The giant was found by a young girl named Terri Hodson Walker. The 25-year-old girl owns land in the county where large mushrooms can often be found, but as the girl says, most of the mushrooms did not reach such large sizes because they were eaten by animals. In addition, such mushrooms are very delicate and any, even the slightest, impact on them has a detrimental effect on their further growth.

Mushrooms are unusual inhabitants of our planet, because they combine the characteristics of both plants and animals. Growing in favorable conditions, mushrooms sometimes reach record sizes. Biologists assure that the largest mushrooms are not an anomaly, and almost every species can become a giant mushroom and there are not so few of them in the world.

In the forests of Russia, mushroom pickers have more than once encountered huge mushrooms, photos of which are now gaining popularity on the Internet. Finding them is a real success, because during the mushroom season most of the fruits that could reach record sizes are cut off.

In 2011, a giant was found. During a “silent hunt” this treasure was found by Vladislav Grabosinsky. He did not keep the find for himself, but gave it to botanists at Perm University for study. It turned out that the cap of the raincoat grew in diameter 1 m 72 cm. The height of the fruit reached 52 cm, and the weight was 12.5 kg.

It is worth noting that raincoats are quite common throughout the world, except Antarctica. They can be found in deciduous and coniferous forests, meadows and parks. Depending on the type, fruiting bodies can grow from a few grams to 2-3 kg. The hat can be pear-shaped, round or egg-shaped.

Alexey Korol, who was collecting forest harvest near his village in the Tomsk region, discovered a simply gigantic one. The mushroom picker was petrified by the size of his find: the stem of the fruit reached 28 cm, and the cap had a diameter of 36 cm. The boletus weighed 2.4 kg and was completely clean and without any damage.

You should look for boletus mushrooms in deciduous forests and birch groves. The fruits most often form mycorrhiza with birch, which is why they got this name. There are four types of boletus:

• black;
• pinkish;
• ordinary;
• swampy

The most common boletus in our forests is considered to be the common boletus. Its cap usually grows to about 15 cm. The surface color at a young age is light brown, and as it grows the cap becomes dark brown. The white pulp is quite dense and does not change color when cut.

A huge white mushroom was found in Russia in 1961. This news was immediately broadcast live on Moscow Radio. The find weighed more than 10 kg, and the diameter of the cap reached 58 cm. To date, no information has been preserved about the place of its discovery.

The boletus cap usually reaches 25 cm in diameter. The color of the surface depends on the place of growth. The inhabitants of spruce forests are distinguished by a reddish-brown cap and a thin, high stem. Porcini mushrooms that grow in birch forests are lighter in color, and the relatively thick stem expands towards the base. The stem of the fruiting body reaches 20 cm in height and 10 cm in width.

You can hunt for boletus from June to October. The growth of these fruits is quite rapid: the newly emerged fruit weighs about 2 g, and after 7 days the weight increases to 200 g. Giants weighing up to 5 kg are also often found, but they are mostly worm-eaten.

Quite large tinder fungi are found in the North Caucasus and southern regions of Russia. There are no record holders among them, but you can find a fruit of very impressive size. Recently, this species has spread widely in Altai, where massive tree felling is taking place. The varnished tinder fungus is a saprophyte and contributes to the destruction of wood.

The largest mushrooms in Europe

Today, there are about one hundred thousand varieties of mushrooms, among which there are specimens with healing properties. Some of them contain penicillin and antibiotics. And, of course, the fruits are widely consumed.

Europe is rich in mushroom places, but giants are extremely rare. Scientists have not yet figured out the reason for the growth of fruits to unimaginable sizes.

Of all the huge mushrooms ever found in European countries, the champignon ranks first. Italian Francesco Quito discovered a 14-kilogram fruit in a field near the province of Bari. The farmer and his wife loaded the find onto the car. They brought the giant home, cleaned it, cooked it, and invited friends and neighbors to the table.

Champignons in the wild generally grow no more than 25 cm in height. Adult fruits have a flat cap, while young ones have a round cap. The surface color can be white, brownish or brown. At the beginning of growth, the plates are painted white, and as they mature, the color changes to pink or almost black.

In eastern Switzerland, scientists have discovered a huge mushroom mycelium that is more than 1000 years old. In Europe, this is the largest mushroom, the size of which varies between 800×500 m. As is known, they form mycorrhiza with rhizomes, which has a detrimental effect on trees.

The honey fungus has a relatively small size: the cap is up to 17 cm in diameter, the leg is up to 10 cm in height. The surface comes in various shades of brown or olive greenish. The skin is covered with light scales, which may disappear as they grow.

A huge white one was discovered in Italy. The weight of this delicacy reached 1.89 kg. The difficulty of hunting for this delicacy mushroom is that it grows underground and can only be found with the help of specially trained dogs. The truffle was put up for auction and sold for 61 thousand dollars.

The fruit has a tuberous or round shape. The pulp is fleshy or cartilaginous. The size varies from a small nut to a large potato tuber. You can find truffles in deciduous forests, because they form mycorrhizae with the rhizomes of trees. White truffle most often grows near poplar, rowan, elm, linden and birch.

World record mushrooms

There are several giant mushrooms on earth that are impressive in size. The most expensive fruit was a white truffle weighing 1.5 kg, which was sold for 125 thousand euros at auction.

The highest

The motley umbrella is considered the tallest in the world. This variety is widespread in the forests of Europe, North America, and Australia. Usually the cap reaches 35 cm in diameter, and the leg grows up to 40 cm. But there are specimens whose height can reach half of human height.

Overripe umbrellas are not recommended for consumption, because with age they become quite hard and absorb toxic substances from the environment.

The heaviest

One of the heaviest species is the tinder fungus (Fomitiporia ellipsoidea). The found fruit weighed 500 kg and grew for 20 years. Chinese scientists discovered it on Hainan Island. The diameter of the cap was 88 cm and the height was about 11 m.

During collection, a Canadian resident discovered a huge raincoat, the weight of which reached 26 kg. And in the USA, biologist Rene Andrade found a titanium macromycete (Macrocybe Titans) on a coffee plantation, which weighed 28 kg.

Oldest

The oldest and largest fruit today is Armillaria (Armillaria ostoyae) or dark honey fungus. This species is located in the Malur Nature Reserve in the USA. The fruits are no different from ordinary honey mushrooms, but the underground part reaches unimaginable sizes. The area where the mycelium lives reaches almost 1000 hectares. Scientists have found that this specimen is about 2,500 years old and weighs about 600 tons.

The fastest

Among fast-growing fruits, the record holder is. The growth rate of the fruiting body and mycelium is so high that no other has yet been able to surpass it. The fetal leg can grow 5 mm in a minute. Fast growth is not an advantage, because such fruits not only ripen quickly, but also age quickly. The life cycle of the common moth is 1-2 days.