Who are the earth’s first farmers? Termites, popularly known as white ants. Honestly, I came to know of it only this morning. And there is a special reason for it. For the last three years, mushrooms have sprouted exactly on 28 October, in this part of my plot, and I have shared that information on Facebook. Last year, I even uploaded a video on it in order to talk about Nature’s clock. This time, they appeared two days late. Today is 30 October. The mushrooms erupted on the surface of the soil yesterday evening. Now they have blossomed fully. As 2020 is a leap year, we expected them to appear a day earlier, on 27 October. We do not know the reason for the delay. Perhaps such minor changes are to be expected.
Now, back to termites. Mushrooms are actually fungi. Termites pick their spores, bury them within the chambers in their underground colony, and feed them on undigested parts of wood. Thereafter, the fungus either grows or breaks down the wood and makes it digestible. Either way, this becomes food for the termites. This morning, eager to learn about mushrooms and how they come into being, I read a couple of internet articles. I’ve included them, along with pictures, at the end of this video for those who may have a similar interest. I picked up a few interesting bits of information that were entirely new to me.
Fungus cultivation by termites goes back 25 million years back in time. The oldest fossil of a termite mound was discovered in Tanzania. This phenomenon may be older still, and the discovery of an older fossil may prove that. The human race has been on the planet only for 0.2 0r 0.3 million years ago, and the earth is 4,500 million years old. In other words, fungus cultivation by termites is 100 times older than humans.
Now, if you ask why mushroom grows here, we have no logical answer to give. However, this place has a few peculiarities. It is left untilled. The trees that fall, are left to lie here itself, and termites work on them. Sunlight does not fall directly on this patch of ground because of the huge green cover you can see all around. Therefore, even during the hottest part of the day, this place maintains a temperature of 25 degrees. It is said that the appearance of mushrooms is related to the rains because mushrooms do not survive in dry land. This time, the North East monsoon reached Thiruvananthapuram last Monday night, on 26 October. The mushrooms began to appear three days later, on 29 October.
I got another interesting bit of information from another article. Mushrooms erupt above the ground and release into the air thousands and thousands of microscopic spores that are invisible to the naked eye. This three-cent plot may not have such a dramatic number; I’m speaking of Amazon forests and rain forests in general. Tiny rain droplets settle on them and remain suspended in the atmosphere as vapour, thus causing more rain to fall. If you ask me what you should do in order to allow mushrooms to grow in your plot, I don’t have an answer. I have described what I have done here. Yet, milky mushrooms and button mushrooms do not seem to grow in this place. All I see are needle mushrooms. But all this is the handiwork of Nature.
What we can do to aid the growth of mushrooms is to leave a portion of our plot untilled, not permit any humans to walk there, ensure a good green cover above the area in order to prevent sunlight from falling directly, and leave pieces of log there. The article I read mentions that the wood of the oak tree is not easily digested by termites, and that is why they seek the help of the fungi. Here we do not have the oak, but a hard wood tree called the Indian mulberry, whose branches are left in the soil to rot. That may be the reason why we have mushrooms here. All this was new information for me. It may not be so for you. If you know more, please share it with us. Meanwhile, let us wait till the mushrooms reappear next year.