Swamm-Lore

Humans have been farming fungus
Since the old days of the Tang –
The jellied-ear perhaps was first,
And up the mycoculture sprang !
Shiitake and enoki,
Grown on logs and straw and bran,
Until in damp Enlightened France,
The button mushroom crop began.

Strange, the Romans loved their fungus,
Yet they never learned the knack –
And the monks were so productive,
Yet they only gave the yeast a crack.
Although, it proved quite tricky
Unless sterilized for pathogens –
Far easier to forage in the woods
That mess around with pens.

Meanwhile, folklore had been busy,
Earthy names for ev’rything –
Observe the toadstool and the stinkhorn,
Bird’s-nest and the fairy ring.
But where were all the memory-rhymes
On which ones was it not worth risking ?
Or how to tell a puffball
From a death cap or a poison pigskin ?

Perhaps there are no generalities
To indicate the vicious –
One-by-one, we learn how white gills, say,
Are deadly, or delicious.
Ugly textures, noxious smells,
May sometimes show vitality –
Their looks do not align at all
With fairytale morality.

These days, though, the urban myths
Are more concerned with mould and spore,
And in hallucinations,
And the nuclear clouds of war.
The time of the destroying angel’s
Shrouded in mediaeval mist,
Or from genteel whodunnits,
Or a pith-helmet nat’ralist.

Humans have been farming fungus,
Fascinated with their fruits –
Not really understanding them,
Yet sniffing truffles out of roots.
These days, it’s all commercialised,
To keep safe ev’ry cassarole,
Without an unintended killer
In our toadstool-in-the-hole.

The Chinese appear to have been farming Auricularia heimuer (aka the Black Wood Ear Mushroom) since the Tang Period (₁₀618 – ₁₀907 HE). They local name for it is ‘heimuer’, subsequently used as the species epithet.  However, I have been unable to find any guide as to how this is pronounced.  I think it may be something like high-moo-er, but that sounds more like a cow who has been feeding on a rather different kind of fungus…