I've been growing shiitake mushrooms for several year now and I
don't know why more people don't do the same. They are fun and
easy to grow, absolutely delicious, easy to store for future
use, and good for you, too. First some taxonomy A nice crop of
Shiitake mushrooms on water oak logs. Mushrooms are the fruiting
structures of a fungus. Most of a mushroom fungus consists of
mycelia living and eating invisibly inside dead logs, roots or
stumps. Periodically, the fungus sends up a mushroom that will
release spores to sail on the wind and find more dead plant
material and start a new generation of fungi. Molds and yeasts
are also fungi, and they produce little fruiting structures too.
Fungi are not plants; they are not animals, either. Scientist
recognize five kingdoms of life: Monera (bacteria and blue-green
algae), Protista (protozoans and certain unicellular algae),
Fungi, Animalia and Plantae. Fungus cells have a nucleus that
contains genetic material, unlike bacteria and blue-green algae,
which do not have