Truffles are Mushrooms That Grow Underground
It’s no secret that our community here at Quality Spores is absolutely enamored with mushroom fungi, where truffles grow, learning information about magic mushrooms spores legal status ins-and-outs, but there are some mushroom fungi out there that make our take on “exotic” mushrooms seem practically mundane.
Truffles Cost Per Gram is High And Are The Fruit Generated from Spores
Ultra rare, prohibitively expensive, and prized by discerning diners everywhere — we are, of course, talking about truffles mushrooms price being high as well as other expensive “luxury” gourmet mushrooms coming from spores. The prices some of these mushrooms can fetch are absolutely insane, and that’s probably an understatement. Truffles are nearly as rare as cherished psilocybin spores that yield all types of mushrooms, some of which have psychedelic and therapy properties and benefits.
While we’re quite content to stick with our exotic mushroom spores and our microscopy microscopes, we thought it would be fun to take a closer look at the lavish world of rare and valuable fungi and the truffles mushrooms price justifications for these amazing fruiting bodies from spores.
➢ How To Identify Psilocybin Mushrooms – and what they look like, shrooms AKA magic mushrooms. These exotic mushrooms bodies and their spores and mycelium are fascinating to examine under microscope whether the mushroom fruiting body is growing under ground or above ground. Consuming the mushroom fruit portion is clearly a delicacy and the study of the life-cycle of spores is a growing hobby and area of education.
The European White Truffle: Worth Up to $4,000 Per Pound
Mushroom Fungi Is Valuable and Expensive to Buy At The Mushroom Store
A pound of this mushroom fungi called truffles is worth a fair bit more than this author’s first car cost. Sure, it was a used clunker with a large stain of unknown origin on the passenger seat that looked remarkably like George Takei, but still.
The European White Truffle, depending on the current market, can go for anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 per pound. However, much to the dismay of gourmet mushroom growers, cultivating this specimen is nearly impossible – this fungi is extremely picky about its environment and takes a long time to grow, so it’s easier and more cost-effective to simply forage for it in the wild versus buying it in a mushroom store and then storing it.
Storing Mushroom Spores and the Fruiting Bodies: It’s very important to know how to store spore syringes to preserve them so they don’t go bad, and eventually grow the best yield and fruiting body.
Price of Mushroom Truffles is High Due To Rarity of this Delicacy
We say “simply,” but the price of truffles is so high because of how difficult they are to find. They usually grow underground at the base of oak trees, invisible from the surface. In fact, truffles are so hard to find that many “truffle hunters” are incredibly secretive about their methods, but almost always utilize the aid of a truffle-sniffing dog or, in some cases, even female pigs.
Truffles are so valuable that there’s even a bustling black market surrounding their procurement and trade, and the aforementioned truffle-hunting animals with particularly high skills have even been stolen—no doubt fetching a hefty sum themselves.
The Endangered Japanese Matsutake Mushroom: Fruity, Spicy, and About $1,500 Per Pound
Eastern Asia is perhaps best known for shiitake mushrooms. Meaty, chewy, and undeniably flavorful, they’ve become very popular in the west. Here in the United States, most would consider them a relatively expensive gourmet mushroom at somewhere around $15–$18 per pound—but that’s nothing compared to their much rarer, infinitely more expensive Japanese cousins: the matsutake mushroom.
Matsutake are highly prized for their flavor, which is spicy with notes of fruit. They only grow in the autumn, underneath the shelter of a red pine tree native to the Tamba region outside of Kyoto. These mushrooms are becoming increasingly harder to find, however, because their preferred environment within the red pines is shrinking: insects have been infecting and killing these trees at an increasingly rapid rate in recent years.
Unfortunately, methods to artificially cultivate matsutake mushrooms haven’t yet been developed, and they may never be, due to the very specific needs of this particular fungi. With a diminishing natural environment to grow in, matsutake are now considered endangered, thus their extremely high price.
The Wierdest, Grossest, Most Expensive Fungi in the World, Yartsa Gunbu: Up to $32,000 Per Pound
Sometimes nature does things that just make you shake your head in disgust, disbelief, or both. The Yartsa Gunbu fungi is one of them, and for reasons we’re still trying to wrap our collective heads around here at The Psilocybe Philosophy, also happens to be the most expensive fungi in the world.
So here’s how it works: Yartsa Gunbu is a parasitic fungi. It’s preferred target are the ghost moth caterpillars native to the Himalayas at an altitude of roughly 10,000 to 16,000 feet. The fungi releases its spores, which then infect the hapless little caterpillars and, as the fungi grows, literally eats them alive.
The caterpillars effectively mummify in an upright position. The Yartsa Gunbu then pops out through the head of the caterpillar so that it can face upward from the soil. You’re left with a bizarre sort of caterpillar-carrot mushroom, long, thin, and orange-ish in color.
While relatively common to the area, getting there is difficult, which contributes to the unspeakably high price of Yartsa Gunbu. As with most absolutely repulsive things like this, the fungi is believed to be an aphrodisiac. Combine these notions with its perceived value as an ultra-luxury status item, and you have an explanation for its cost of $32,000 per pound. However, Yartsa Gunbu is rarely traded in such large quantities, typically available by-the-ounce at a much more reasonable $2,000.
We’ll Be Sticking With Our Version of Exotic Psilocybe Cubensis Spores Types Such as Golden Teacher and Penis Envy Varieties – Here’s How You Can Get Started Too
We think that our version of exotic mushroom spores are far more interesting than any of the fungi we’ve covered here today—and they’re certainly more affordable.
As interesting as a grotesque fungi like Yartsa Gunbu is, we suspect readers will have a far better time studying something like Golden Teacher Spores, or Penis Envy Spores under their microscopes.