Golden Oysters: Why we don’t cultivate them
- May 19
- 2 min read
by Don King
Why we chose NOT to cultivate these beautiful and delicious mushrooms.
If you’ve been to a higher end grocery store or farmers market, you’ve probably seen them: clusters of vibrant, golden-yellow fungi that look very similar to our native oyster mushrooms. They’re flashy, eye-catching, and extremely easy to grow. But their ease of cultivation is the exact reason they’re so problematic.
Golden oysters (Pleurotus citrinopileatus) are VERY aggressive, just like most other species in the Pleurotus genus. While this is a huge benefit for cultivators, it’s also the reason this species is becoming highly invasive in North America. When an aggressive fungus finds suitable habitat, it will inevitably outcompete less aggressive fungi. And the more prolific a mushroom-producing fungus is, the more spores it will release upon maturity, creating a cycle of exponential growth and expansion. This is robbing native fungi of their natural habitat, as every log that hosts golden oysters is a log that would have otherwise been home to elm oysters, pearl and summer oysters, chicken of the woods, turkey tails, or dozens of other culinary and medicinal mushrooms.
Golden oyster mushrooms are native to China, Japan, and Russia, but are now found in other regions of Asia and Europe, as well as Switzerland, Africa, and both North and South America. While we don’t know exactly how and when this process began, many experts believe that golden oyster mushrooms “escaped cultivation” in the early 2000s, which is when their popularity as a gourmet mushroom grew. Once their spores were released into suitable habitats, their spread was quick and dramatic, ruling out any pragmatic way of mitigating them. And their proliferation shows no evidence of slowing down.
What can you do to help? For starters, you might consider having conversations with vendors who cultivate or sell invasive golden oyster mushrooms. While this won’t be news to most of them, it’s possible that they just simply don’t realize how big of a problem this is becoming. If you happen to find them in the wild, try to harvest them before they mature, which will help to mitigate the release of spores. Putting them directly into a paper bag and folding over the top may also help to prevent the spread of even more spores. And if you’re thinking about growing them yourself, consider choosing native pearl oysters (Pleurotus ostreatus) instead. You’re unlikely to notice much of a difference once they're on your plate!
To dive deeper into this subject, I recommend checking out this article:
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