GrowthPatterns

The simple questions of how mycelia develop are not all fully understood.

This is our first experiment to try and find out why you often see 'rings' on your plates...

marker shows extent of growth at each date

plates on the left were exposed to much less light than those on the right- which had at least a half hour of light exposure on the two 'scoring' days...

The top cultures are Shiitake, while below are from King Pleurotes.

The plates on the right side in these images were exposed to at least half an hour of light on the 'scoring' days...

The plates on the left side were mainly kept in the shade...

From this test, it certainly looks like light is a key determinant, for formation of the obvious growth rings.

The King Pleurotes even made some extra pigment, it seems from the light exposure!

Hoping to get more people to try this, but the following pictures show our first result.