You’ve heard of invasive plants and animals, but what about mushrooms? Around Illinois, you won’t have to look far to find invasive mushrooms.
Golden Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus citrinopileatus) are a popular edible fungus that has become invasive in North America in the past decade. Walk through a forested trail on a warm day in May, and you will find bursting clusters of bright-yellow-capped mushrooms growing all over dead logs. The golden oyster mushroom was brought to North America in the 1990s for cultivation and captured the hearts of mushroom growers and consumers due to its attractive yellow caps, easy cultivation, fast growth, nutrition, and delicious taste.
But along with the mushroom's growing popularity came opportunities to escape, and escape it did. Spores and bits of fungus from commercial mushroom farms, inoculated logs, and grow-at-home kits were able to establish in nearby forests. The fungus has since rapidly spread across the Midwest and Northeast, and has recently been found naturalized in parts of Europe as well.
This blog was written by Aishwarya Veerabahu, Botany PhD student, University of Wisconsin
Invasive mushrooms are a big deal
Like invasive plants and animals, the golden oyster mushroom outcompetes local fungal species, lowering fungal biodiversity in forests, and changing the community identity by affecting which fungi can co-exist in dead trees.
Fungal biodiversity is vital for healthy environments because they are responsible for a variety of essential tasks. Fungi recycle and move nutrients like carbon and nitrogen, have complex relationships with insects, animals, and all kinds of plants and trees, and break down dead material, helping turn it into soil.
Golden oyster mushroom is particularly worrisome because it is a wood-decay fungus that grows on dead logs, which seems to chew through wood really fast. By accelerating the rate of wood decay, organisms that rely on dead wood for habitat will be affected due to decreased availability. Additionally, the increased rate of decay also raises questions about the potential increase in carbon emissions that occurs from that particular process.
Essentially, a disruption of the historical rate of wood decay in an ecosystem can have cascading effects and potentially devastating consequences.
Prevent the spread of golden oyster mushroom
There are many mysteries left to solve with the golden oyster mushroom, but researchers have a strong start on deciphering how it is impacting local ecosystems and how to start managing it.
Though it’s impossible to remove this or any invasive mushroom once it’s established in an area, there are some things you can do:
- Most importantly, try not to introduce it into a new environment and consider buying/growing local mushroom varieties instead. You can also talk to local mushroom businesses and highlight that the golden oyster mushroom has invasive risks and impacts.
- It’s OK to keep foraging for and enjoying golden oysters, though unfortunately, we’re not going to eat our way out of this problem. If you see it for the first time in a new place, you could try to remove that log and burn it, or alert a forest official to try and remove the log in an attempt to slow/prevent its spread.
- Lastly, report it! If you see golden oyster mushrooms, take a photo and upload your observation to sites like iNaturalist or MushroomObserver so researchers can keep monitoring its spread!
Learn More
- USDA, Forest Service: Invasive golden oyster mushrooms are disrupting native fungal communities as they spread throughout North America
- University of Wisconsin: Gold Oyster Community Project
- Golden oyster mushroom culinary uses
About Everyday Environment
Everyday Environment is a series of blogs, podcasts, webinars, and videos exploring the intricate web of connections that tie us to the natural world.
Was there something about this blog's topic we didn’t cover? See something cool in nature? Let us know! Hit "Connect with Us" below to send us your question or share your everyday nature observation with and we may share it in a future blog or podcast.