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Pink Oyster Mushroom Culture Syringe

Pink Oyster Mushroom Culture Syringe

Pleurotus djamor, commonly known as the Pink Oyster Mushroom, is a delicious species of fungus in the family Pleurotaceae. It was originally named Agaricus djamor.

 

The flavor of the pink oyster mushroom has been described as meaty and fishy. Just like most mushrooms it is quite umami. Its texture is both meaty and chewy. When fried until crispy, it resembles bacon or even ham. However, when it is raw, it has a sour taste.

 

The pink oyster mushroom, unsurprisingly has a pink color. When cooked, however, the color quickly fades. It has a curly cap which is 2 – 5 cm in diameter. The caps are also quite thin. The stem is very short or even non existent.

 

The reason why it is very rare to find in supermarkets is that it has a shelf life of only about a day. Since it is only harvested from spring to fall, it is only available during that time.

 

Native to the Mediterranean, they are perhaps most commonly used in Asian cuisines such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean; three countries where the mushroom is cultivated on a large scale.This impressive mushroom averages between 10–15cm in length, has a long shelf life in the fridge (roughly one week) and doesn’t lose its shape when cooked.

 

The texture is sometimes likened to abalone or scallops, which makes them an interesting option for vegetarians and are often billed as ‘mushroom steaks’ or ‘vegan scallops’.

 

When harvesting your  king oyster mushroomsWhen buying king oysters, you want to select them carefully as they don’t come cheap! Choose mushrooms with firm, unblemished stems.

 

The caps are quite delicate so be sure to select unbroken ones if you’re after beautiful presentation.If you are eating the mushrooms raw and finely sliced, select smaller mushrooms as they are said to be slightly stronger in flavour.

 

Once cooked however, the mushroom's natural umami flavour is unleashed, so size does not matter – go as big or as small as you like. is a genus of gilled mushrooms which includes one of the most widely eaten mushrooms, P. ostreatus. Species of Pleurotus may be called oyster, abalone, or tree mushrooms, and are some of the most commonly cultivated edible mushrooms in the world.

 

Pleurotus fungi have been used in mycoremediation of pollutants such as petroleum and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.Oyster mushrooms contain lovastatin, a form of cholesterol lowering statin.

 

Description

The caps may be laterally attached (with no stipe). If there is a stipe, it is normally eccentric and the gills are decurrent along it. The term pleurotoid is used for any mushroom with this general shape. 

 

The spores are smooth and elongated (described as "cylindrical"). Where hyphae meet, they are joined by clamp connections. Pleurotus is not considered to be a bracket fungus, and most of the species are monomitic (with a soft consistency). However, remarkably, Pleurotus dryinus can sometimes be dimitic, meaning that it has additional skeletal hyphae, which give it a tougher consistency like bracket fungi. 

 

Ecology 

Pleurotus fungi are found in both tropical and temperate climates throughout the world.Most species of Pleurotus are white-rot fungi on hardwood trees, although some also decay conifer wood. Pleurotus eryngii is unusual in being a weak parasite of herbaceous plants, and P. tuber-regium produces underground sclerotia. In addition to being saprotrophic, all species of Pleurotus are also nematophagous, catching nematodes by paralyzing them with a toxin. 

 

Cuisine 

Oyster mushrooms are popular for cooking, torn up instead of sliced, especially in stir fry or sauté, because they are consistently thin, and so will cook more evenly than uncut mushrooms of other types.  They are often used in vegetarian cuisine. 

 

Taxonomy

 

Phylogeny The classification of species within the genus Pleurotus is difficult due to high phenotypic variability across wide geographic ranges, geographic overlap of species, and on going evolution and speciation. Early taxonomic efforts placed the oyster mushrooms within a very broad Agaricus as Agaricus ostreatus (Jacq. 1774). Paul Kummer defined the genus Pleurotus in 1871; since then, the genus has been narrowed with species moving to other genera such as Favolaschia, Hohenbuehelia, Lentinus, Marasmiellus, Omphalotus, Panellus, Pleurocybella, and Resupinatus. See Singer (1986) for an example of Pleurotus taxonomy based on morphological characteristics.

 

More recently, molecular phylogenetics has been utilized to determine genetic and evolutionary relationships between groups within the genus, delineating discrete clades.  Pleurotus, along with the closely related genus Hohenbuehelia, has been shown to be monophyletic.  Tests of cross-breeding viability between groups have been used to further define which groups are deserving of species rank, as opposed to subspecies, variety, or synonymy. If two groups of morphologically distinct Pleurotus fungi are able to cross-breed and produce fertile offspring, they meet one definition of species. These reproductively discrete groups, referred to as intersterility groups, have begun to be defined in Pleurotus. Many binomial names used in literature are now being grouped together as species complexes using this technique, and may change.

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