Lasry Center for Bioscience<\/a> to identify it along with numerous other varieties collected during their outing. Over the next several weeks, the students will select several species to culture and cultivate in the lab — including edible mushrooms that they can take home and cook.<\/p>\n“This class is sampling lots of different areas, but it’s mainly about diversity of mushrooms, ecological roles, and ethnomycology, with a focus on mushroom-forming fungi,” Hibbett explains. “Fungi are the master recyclers of plant organic matter. They take all the carbon that’s locked up in wood and other plant tissues and release it back into the atmosphere as CO2<\/sub>, and also release nutrients that are trapped in plant material. They play a critical role in that regard.”<\/p>\nThis semester, the introductory mycology class made several socially distanced trips to the nearby arboretum — a 15-minute walk from Clark’s campus — to forage for mushrooms. The University-owned property, located at the intersection of Lovell and May streets, contains 6.4 acres of woodland green space in the heart of Worcester. It is also home to thousands of varieties of fungi and hundreds of species of mushrooms, according to Hibbett, making it the perfect location for the students’ fieldwork.<\/p>\n
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