The spawn of the mushroom is the popular word used in speaking of the mycelium of the mushroom. The term is commonly used in a commercial sense of material in which the mycelium is growing. This material is horse manure, or a mixture of one or two kinds of manure with some soil, and with the threads of the mycelium growing in it. The mycelium, as is well known, is the growing or vegetative part of the mushroom. Sometimes the word "fiber" is used by the mushroom growers in referring to the mycelium which appears in the spawn, or in the mushroom bed. The mycelium is that portion of the plant which, in the case of the wild varieties, grows in the soil, or in the leaf mold, in the tree trunk or other material from which the mushroom derives its food. The threads of mycelium, as we know, first originated from the spore of the mushroom. The spore germinates and produces delicate threads, which branch and increase by growth in extent, and form the mycelium. So the term spawn is rarely applied to the pure mycelium, but is applied to the substratum or material in which spawn is growing; that is, the substratum and mycelium together constitute the spawn.

Natural Spawn Or Virgin Spawn

This is termed natural spawn because it occurs under natural conditions of environment. The original natural spawn was to be found in the fields. In the early history of mushroom culture the spawn from the pastures and meadows where mushrooms grew was one of the sources of the spawn used in planting. The earth containing the spawn underneath clumps of mushrooms was collected and used.

It occurs more abundantly, however, in piles of horse manure which have stood for some time in barn yards, or very often in stalls where the manure is allowed to accumulate, has been thoroughly tramped down and then has been left in this condition for some time. It occurs also in composts, hothouse beds, or wherever accumulations of horse manure are likely to occur, if other conditions are congenial. The origin of the natural spawn under these conditions of environment is probably accounted for in many cases by the presence of the spores which have been in the food eaten by the horse, have passed through the alimentary canal and are thus distributed through the dung.

The spores present in the food of the horse may be due to various conditions. Horses which go out to pasture are likely to take in with the food obtained in grazing the spores scattered around on the grass, and in the upper part of the sod, coming from mushrooms which grew in the field. In other cases, the spores may be present in the hay, having been carried by the wind from adjacent fields, if not from those which have grown in the meadow. In like manner they may be present in the oats which have been fed to the horse. In the case of stable-fed animals, the inoculation of the manure in this way may not always be certain or very free. But in the case of pasture-fed horses which are stalled at night probably the inoculation is very .certain and very abundant, so that a large number of spores would be present in the manure from horses fed in this way.

The natural spawn also may originate from spores which are carried by the wind from the pasture or meadow mushrooms upon manure piles, or especially from spores which may lodge in the dust of the highways or street. Many of these spores would cling to the hoofs of the horses and at night, or at times of feeding, would be left with the manure in the stall. At other times horse droppings may be gathered from roads or streets where spores may be present in the dust. The piles of the droppings accumulated in this way, if left a sufficient time, may provide natural spawn by this accidental inoculation from the spores.

Probably few attempts have been made to grow the natural spawn with certainty in this country, though it does not appear to be an impracticable thing to do, since formerly this was one source of the virgin spawn in Europe. It is usually obtained by search through stables and barn yards or other places where piles of horse manure have accumulated and have remained for several months. In some cases the growers keep men employed through the summer season searching the yards and stables over a considerable area for the purpose of finding and gathering this natural spawn. It is probably termed virgin spawn because of its origin under these natural conditions, and never having been propagated artificially.

The natural spawn, as indicated above, is employed for a variety of purposes. It is used for inoculating the bricks in the manufacture of brick spawn. It is used for propagating once or twice in the mushroom beds, for the purpose of multiplying it, either in the manufacture of brick spawn, or for flake spawn, which is planted directly in the beds to be used for the crop. In some places in America it is collected on a large scale and relied on as the chief source of spawn for planting beds. In such cases the natural or virgin spawn is used directly and is of the first and most vigorous generation. It is believed by growers who employ it in this way that the results in the quality and quantity of the crop exceed those produced from the market spawn. But even these growers would not always depend on the natural spawn, for the reason, that collecting it under these conditions, the quantity is certain to vary from year to year. This is due probably to varying conditions of the season and also to the varying conditions which bring about the chance inoculation, or the accumulation of the material in the yard for a sufficient amount of time to provide the mycelium.

It would be interesting, and it might also prove to be profitable to growers, if some attempt were made to grow natural spawn under conditions which would perhaps more certainly produce a supply. This might be attempted in several different ways. Stall-fed horses might be fed a ripe mushroom every day or two. Or from the cap of ripe mushrooms the spores might be caught, then mixed with oats and fed to the horse. Again, the manure piles might be inoculated by spores caught from a number of mushrooms. Manure might also be collected during the summer months from the highways and aside from the probable natural inoculation which this material would probably have from the spores blown from the meadow and pasture mushrooms, additional inoculation might be made. The manure obtained in this way could be piled under sheds, packed down thoroughly, and not allowed to heat above 100° F. These piles could then be left for several months, care being used that the material should have the proper moisture content, not too dry nor too wet. This is given only as a suggestion and it is hoped that some practical grower will test it upon a small scale. In all cases the temperature should be kept low during the fermentation of these piles, else the spawn will be killed.

One of the methods of obtaining natural spawn recommended by Cuthill ("Treatise on the Cultivation of the Mushroom") is to collect horse droppings all along the highways during the summer, mixing it with some road sand and piling it in a dry shed. Here it is packed down firmly to prevent the heat rising too high. A "trial" stick is kept in the pile. When this is pulled out, if it is so hot as to "burn the hand," the heat is too great and would kill the spawn. In several months an abundance of the spawn is generated here.