A variant of the mushroom, the cremini or “coffee”, with a dark brown color and firmer texture, is also available in the market and is much appreciated in its ripe form, the famous Portobello.Īlthough the mushroom is less famous for its medicinal properties than its Asian cousins, it contains proteins similar to those of legumes (lectins) that, in the laboratory, prevent the growth of certain cancer cells. Its flavor is not very pronounced and it is very popular especially in the West, where its consumption can reach 1 kg per person per year.
Its cultivation, started by the gardener of Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie (1624-1691), was actually extended during the reign of Napoleon I in 1810, thanks to the efforts of the agronomist Chambry, who discovered (by the greatest chance ) that the abandoned quarries around Paris were an ideal location because of their temperature (10-15 ° C) and constant humidity.Īlthough French-speaking people call it a ‘Parisian’ mushroom, it is currently grown primarily in the United States (especially Pennsylvania), China, the Netherlands, and the Anjou region of France. This mushroom, called the Paris mushroom by the French speakers and the button mushroom by the English, is rather rare in the wild, and is the most widely cultivated in the world. The body of knowledge acquired on the nutritional, toxic or hallucinogenic properties of mushrooms (see pages 30-31) are the result of multiple trials and errors made by humans, for which the abundance of these vegetables Mushrooms thus constitute a distinct, extremely varied living kingdom, with its 100,000 species, of which at least 2,000 are edible and 500 are recognized as having, to varying degrees, an influence on the functions of the human body. When conditions are favorable, the carpophorus can literally grow like a mushroom, at prodigious speed Some species can go from the size of a pinhead to maturity in a few hours!
This “organ of reproduction”, called carpophorus (from the Greek karpos, fruit, and phora, carry), contains the genetic material of the mushroom in the form of spores destined to be spread by the wind. What we call a mushroom is, in reality, only the tiny visible part of this vast network of filaments (11 cm3 of fertile soil can contain up to 100 m of mycelium!) And it is only used for its reproduction. Mushrooms are therefore limited to taking the nutritive elements from their environment, thanks to an underground network of thin filaments, the mycelium. In effect, they are not plants, because they have neither leaves nor roots and are devoid of chlorophyll, which makes them unable to use sunlight to make the essential food for their survival. Mushrooms are very special vegetables from a biological point of view. Vegetables that don’t work like the others!
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