column & photos by Frank Hyman
The Japanese have cultivated shiitake mushrooms on logs for more than 1,000 years. In the beginning, a live Japanese chinquapin tree would be cut down and dragged alongside a standing tree full of wild shiitake mushrooms. “Shii” means oak and “take” means mushrooms in Japanese. Spores from the standing tree would disperse and inoculate the fallen tree. Sometimes this was done when a male child was born so he would benefit from this growing treasure.