From the history of mushrooms

Since ancient times mushrooms have played an important role in human nutrition. It is known that primitive hunters and gatherers were already able to recognize not only their nutritional properties, but also knew how to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous and inedible.

As the natural sciences developed, scientists and doctors of antiquity began to pay more attention to fungi. During this period, the first written mentions of fungi appeared, but as a rule, these documents indicated only species without detailed descriptions.

Greek physician and founder of scientific medicine Hippocrates not only wrote in his works about fungi, but also confirmed their importance for medicine. However, classification and taxonomy of known species did not exist, because at that time people knew very little about the origin, structure and life of fungi.

In the first illustrated book describing herbs, mushrooms were depicted next to wriggling snakes.

For the first time the place of fungi in the plant world was determined by Theophrastus( 372-287 BC), who was a disciple of Aristotle. The fact of the appearance of fungi, he explained, "the excess moisture of the soil, trees, rotting tree and other rotting objects."His statements about the origin of fungi were considered true for 2000 years, and therefore all the great scientists who lived after Theophrastus unconditionally agreed with his opinion.

After Theophrastus, references to fungi began to appear in other authors, such as Dioscorides, Pliny the Elder, who lived in the 1st century BC.BC.e. These scientists have already tried to make the first descriptions of the most famous large fungi and outlined some of their properties.

Dioscorides, in addition to the description of edible and poisonous mushrooms, also indicated the therapeutic properties of the larch tinder.

The toxicity of mushrooms was explained by the place of their germination. For example, Pliny the Elder argued that mushrooms that grow near snake nests, rusty iron and other wastes are highly poisonous. This view was held up to the Middle Ages.

This doctrine of mushrooms, as well as the fear that people experienced in front of mushrooms, led to the fact that mushrooms for a long time were considered something special and mysterious, and therefore associated with dark forces.

The first rock image of the mushroom was found by archaeologists in the Egyptian royal tomb, it belonged to 1450 BC.e.

Mushrooms were conceived as a magical and diabolical creation and a witch tool. This is evidenced by the folk names of many species of fungi: witch egg, satanic mushroom, etc., or such expression as "witch circle".

At the end of the Middle Ages, when the natural sciences began to develop, new information about mushrooms appeared.

By that time already tried somehow to qualify the known types of mushrooms. For example, Carl Clusius( 1525-1609) divided the mushrooms into poisonous and edible species and distributed similar species into families.

The main discoveries concerning fungi were made after the Dutchman Zachary Jansen invented a microscope in 1590.

This invention allowed scientists not only to describe fungi by their external features, but also to consider in detail the internal structure of fungi.

Pastor Jakob Christian Schaeffer( 1718-1790) in his composition, consisting of 4 volumes, described about 400 different species of fungi, and about 80 of these fungi were named for the first time.

In Scheffer's books all the illustrations were hand-painted, and the publication of these volumes was possible thanks to financial support from the Russian royal house.

Italian scientist P. Mikeli( 1679-1737) was the first to collect and seed the spores of various species of fungi on a natural soil or foundation, thus proving that fungi reproduce by means of spores. Similarly P. Mikeli managed to grow mold mushrooms on pieces of pear and melon. Similar experiments he conducted with plate mushrooms, sowing their spores on fallen leaves.

Despite this, P. Mikeli has not been able to assess the importance of the mycelium( mycelium), and for quite a long time the mycelium was considered a species, a fungus. And only after a few decades the statement that mushrooms grow in mud, in moisture and rot was finally refuted.

Somewhat later a botanist and physician from the Netherlands Christian Hendrik Persot( 1755-1837) published his works, in which the fungi were systematized and classified.

In the future, scientists around the world began to not only discover, but also describe in detail all the new species of mushrooms.

In 1834 the French explorer Henri Dutrosche( 1776-1847) was able to prove that the fungus consists of branching strands that grow in the soil, and they form the mycelium. Thus, he proved that the fruit bodies, which are called mushrooms in the people, are nothing more than an organ for the formation of spores.

The Swedish botanist Elias Magnus Fries( 1794-1878) developed the systematization of plate-shaped fungi, which was based on the classification of the color of spores of fungi. And the main provisions of this work have not lost their relevance at the present time.

Adalbert Ricken( 1850-1921) made a great contribution to the scientific knowledge of fungi. It was he who managed to describe 3,500 species of fungi, that is, all the fungi that were known by that time.

In his first book, called "Plate Mushrooms", he was able to describe about 1500 species of mushrooms. All these mushrooms he divided into orders and families, based on the classification, which was developed by E. M. Fries. In his second book, which was published in 1918 and was called "Handbook for mushroom lovers", there were already described about 2000 species of mushrooms.

In the future, all issues that were related to the kinship and systematics of mushrooms, receded into the background. After in 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered the antibacterial action of the mold fungus Penicillium notatum, active research was begun on the substances contained in the fungi, from the point of view of their use in medicine.

Scientists have found that in addition to antibiotics in fungi, there are chemical compounds that in the future can be used to lower blood pressure and cholesterol level in the blood.

The discovery of a fungus, capable of absorbing foreign matter from crude oil, is of great importance for science, due to which the quality of raw materials is significantly improved. So Kaj & lt;fungi contain proteins, they can be purified and used as animal feed.

Recently, scientists around the world once again turned their attention to the questions relating to the species of fungi, their relationship, lifestyle and distribution.

Scientists of the present know about 100 thousand different kinds of mushrooms, most of which grows on the territory of North America and Europe. In Russia, there are more than 150 species of mushrooms that are suitable for eating.