K.— BOTANY 193 



One species, ' Shiitake ' 5 — Cortinellus Shiitake — -is cultivated, 2,000,000 

 kilograms being produced annually, of which 700,000 kilograms are 

 exported, valued at ,£100,000. The primitive method of cultivation, 

 which is said to date back more than a thousand years, was merely to 

 make a pile of logs in moist, shady places in the forest. In modern practice 

 the logs are inoculated with powdered infected wood, or with spores of 

 the fungus shed on the mats used during drying and mixed with sawdust, 

 or with macerated sporophores. These are inserted in the log and the 

 holes or incisions covered with leafy branches or with wet straw-mats. 6 

 There are two crops a year. S. Mimura states that as a result of more 

 scientific methods there was an increase of over twenty per cent, in pro- 

 duction in about ten years. 



As the climate of Japan where Shiitake flourishes is much like that of 

 Central Europe, H. Mayr of Munich attempted to introduce the fungus 

 and its culture. Though his experiments, which began in 1903, were 

 carried on for ten years or so they met with only partial success. 



More recently F. Passecker has succeeded in growing the fungus in 

 pure-culture up to the fruiting stage. 



The Chinese in Formosa have long valued as food young shoots of 

 Zizania aquatica (Canada rice) infected with Ustilago esculenta. The 

 mycelium of the smut is perennial in the rhizome, so that when infection 

 has once taken place the grass produces hypertrophied shoots each year. 

 Before spore-formation the hyphal mass is white and compact, and at 

 this stage is sold in the markets as ' kah-peh-soon,' ' white bamboo-shoot 

 growing on the wild rice plant.' Cultivation is carried out along road- 

 sides and in small gardens. The ripe black spore-powder was formerly 

 sold on the mainland of Japan and was used ' to paint eyebrows and 

 borders of the hair by ladies or actors and sometimes used as medicine.' 



The third fungus mentioned, Volvaria vohacea, is widely cultivated 

 in the tropics. This species occurs in Europe, but is somewhat un- 

 common, being found for the most part on tan in glass-houses. It is 

 rather remarkable that until a few years ago all species of Volvaria were 

 considered poisonous, possibly owing to comparison with Amanita 

 phalloides. The wide extent of the cultivation of Volvaria vohacea is 

 only now becoming realised, although Rumphius so early as 1740 men- 

 tioned the fungus under the names Boletus moschocaryanus and B. sanguineus. 

 In recent literature it usually appears as Volvaria esculenta Bres. (191 2). 

 The first detailed account of its cultivation came from the Philippines, but 

 the general methods are followed also in Java, lndo-China, Madagascar, and 

 West Africa. Heaps of vegetable refuse — rice-straw, sugar-cane bagasse, 

 chopped banana trunks and leaves, husks of coffee and nutmegs, refuse 

 from citron oil, sago or indigo manufactories — are built in shady or damp 

 places in abaca and banana plantations or in old overgrown wood-lots. 



6 ' Shii ' is the Japanese name for Pasania (Castanopsis) cuspidata, ' take ' 

 means a fungus. The fungus grows also on Quercus and other Fagaceae. 



6 There is a similar practice in the mountains of parts of Foochow. ' Incisions 

 are made in the logs, liquid manure is poured over the incisions, straw is covered 

 over them, and when this is well rotted the fungi spring forth.' (J. Arnold, 

 quoted in Philippine Edible Fungi, by O. A. Reinking). Foochow is the centre 

 of the Chinese dried-fungus trade. 



