Hello everyone,
I've watched this thread evolve over the past several days, and think it has gone a bit far. Please allow me to set the record straight.
- The fungi used for controlled spalting are native to North America and most of Europe. They are non-pathenogenic to humans AND non-pathenogenic to trees.
- In controlled spalting experiments, no one is 'forcing' fungi to do anything. You can't force a fungus to grow on a piece of wood anyway. Either it does or it doesn't.
- Fungi in the forest are dispersed in several methods, one of which is by air. Air currents carry the spores to new logs for colonization. Its a misconception to think that a fungus that grows on a sugar maple doesn't have access in nature to say, oaks. The spores land and grow wherever they can.
- Even if the pen blanks were spalted with restricted fungi (which they are not), the blanks are autoclaved before leaving the lab. Nothing gets out. Not that it would matter if it did.
- Nothing is being 'introduced' into the wild. We aren't secretly plotting to take over the world by releasing mutated Turkey Tail on an unsuspecting sugar maple population. Dead Man's Finger isn't going to end the lumber industry, or civilization, as we know it. There is nothing we do in the lab that is not identical to what could happen in nature, except that we kill everything before it leaves the lab.
So please, relax. You guys give us way too much mad scientist credit. We're too underfunded for that. :bulgy-eyes:
