Nef said:

yeah I only have them on agar so far. I use the same agar mix for everything, but I reduce the grain water concentration for fast and whispy exotics, which I would not consider WLs to be. For sure people are cultivating them side by side with cyan, not sure if PNW or not. LandTrout hasn't been around but he is cultivating all the WLs side by side pretty much and may be worth a conversation

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Roostre said:

Just curious, what is your agar mix? I've been experimenting with a combination of grain soak water, wood chip soak water (it contains a 3% bleach solution which may or may not be an issue, I haven't determined yet), tap, and some LME. I have found that the LME helps make the cultures a bit more robust and when I lowered the ratio, my plates got a lot weaker looking. Definitely curious what you & other folks are doing with wood lover cultures and if there is conclusive evidence that including these other sources of sugars helps speed up subsequent grain & wood chip colonization. For now I figure it can't hurt, but I could also be wrong!

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At the minute I am using 50% grain water, 50% distilled, then add 1g yeast, 1g malt extract and 8g agar agar (500ml total volume). This has been really great for most things here. But honestly I would just stick with something you like and something you can find use for across all cultures. The addition of wood water and such has not done anything special for me here. Anything with bleach sounds like a bad idea to me, but honestly I have no idea. My only experience with bleach was some soaked wood I did in bleach from an old tek and myc would not jump off onto it really. I may have misapplied the tek though

A lot of people do the simple and classic 2% MEA, just malt and nothing else, have great results too. I reckon probably the agar mix is one of the least important parts, but it does surely affect morphology on the plate to some degree. People have great results with agar made from dog food even. I feel it is just not that hard and fast important

Nef said:

At the minute I am using 50% grain water, 50% distilled, then add 1g yeast, 1g malt extract and 8g agar agar (500ml total volume). This has been really great for most things here. But honestly I would just stick with something you like and something you can find use for across all cultures. The addition of wood water and such has not done anything special for me here. Anything with bleach sounds like a bad idea to me, but honestly I have no idea. My only experience with bleach was some soaked wood I did in bleach from an old tek and myc would not jump off onto it really. I may have misapplied the tek though

A lot of people do the simple and classic 2% MEA, just malt and nothing else, have great results too. I reckon probably the agar mix is one of the least important parts, but it does surely affect morphology on the plate to some degree. People have great results with agar made from dog food even. I feel it is just not that hard and fast important

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huicholstudent said:

I have seen the picture charts folks have shared here on the shroomery and also the genetic data on subs and similar/linked species such as cyans and azzies. I am very interested in theories around the origins of these woodlovers--one dominant one being azzies and cyans hitched a ride on dune grass from Australia in the late 1800's to the Oregon coast in efforts to fight sand dune erosion. This theory makes sense since subs and cyans and azzies look so similar and their genetic makeup are also very similar. I also read Stamets believes cyans drifted down rivers from the mountains to the sea but this theory isn't supported by much evidence as far as I can tell. Very cool species and variations indeed! Keep us posted on your progress.

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Roostre said:

Probably a noob question, but what does the inclusion of yeast add to the mixture?

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In my experience, pretty much, more robust growth across all cultures. Nothing fancy, things just look thicker and denser and better. Your mileage may vary, some love it, some say it makes not much difference some things require local testing, see for yourself, best way

Drmbanana said:

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You're going to go through a lot of popcorn before you see the results of that post.  When you resurrect a 5+ year old post from a member that self banned a long time ago you are committing necromancy

Roostre said:

huicholstudent said:

I have seen the picture charts folks have shared here on the shroomery and also the genetic data on subs and similar/linked species such as cyans and azzies. I am very interested in theories around the origins of these woodlovers--one dominant one being azzies and cyans hitched a ride on dune grass from Australia in the late 1800's to the Oregon coast in efforts to fight sand dune erosion. This theory makes sense since subs and cyans and azzies look so similar and their genetic makeup are also very similar. I also read Stamets believes cyans drifted down rivers from the mountains to the sea but this theory isn't supported by much evidence as far as I can tell. Very cool species and variations indeed! Keep us posted on your progress.

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Another factor to consider with this - I've always thought it kind of strange that there is little to no history (that I've seen at least) of native PNW tribes using these mushrooms. I know there's some discussion of a similar topic going on re: ovoids, and I can't really speak to that, but cyanescens especially are just so distinctive and alluring when you see them in person that I have a very hard time believing they would have been overlooked in 2+ millennia of human civilization - even if they were a rarer alder forest mushroom as Stamets has posited.

It tracks to me that these species might have been derived from subs (before or after being transported along with our very invasive friend Ammophila arenaria, from Australia) because their arrival sometime in the 1800s or so would explain the lack of any use by natives pre-European colonization.

Obviously this is all speculation still, but interesting stuff nonetheless.

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Mr Piggy said:

18+ millennia and counting at this point.  Every year or two it gets bumped back a few k years and native people just say "yeah, like we told you."

I agree I don't think they come from here but there's also the argument that we don't hear native knowledge about it because 99% of the native population was wiped out through systemic genocide.  With that level of decimation, 99% of the traditional knowledge probably went with them.  We'll simply never know because of the horrific acts of our ancestors.

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RescueU said:

From what I've read disease wiped out low end 90% - high end 98% of the native population in the Americas. It wasn't just from hands on killing. That disease could have been spread from a friendly meeting, but it doesn't matter how. What were left did an admirable job of trying to preserve what was left of their culture. I'm going to guess that the ones left had a lot of more important things to do than try and remember exactly what species were used for some ceremony or something. They probably were more concerned with what food were just edible, and how to prepare them.

It would be really cool to find some artifacts in North America like a double nostril snorter that the Central/South American people used.Or even a depiction of a mushroom in a ceremonial use.

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Mr Piggy said:

Any time indigenous folks were engaged in war without disease first going through and decimating the population they won the battles.

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