Paul Stamets, speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur, is considered an intellectual and industry leader in fungi: habitat, medicinal use, and production. He lectures extensively to deepen the understanding and respect for the organisms that literally exist under every footstep taken on this path of life. His presentations cover a range of mushroom species and research showing how mushrooms can help the health of people and planet. His central premise is that habitats have immune systems, just like people, and mushrooms are cellular bridges between the two. Our close evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings in the microbiome that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement.
Paul’s philosophy is that “MycoDiversity is BioSecurity.” He sees the ancient Old Growth forests of the Pacific Northwest as a resource of incalculable value, especially in terms of its fungal genome. A dedicated hiker and explorer, his passion is to preserve and protect as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible from these pristine woodlands. His research is considered breakthrough by thought leaders for creating a paradigm shift for helping ecosystems worldwide.
Paul is the author of six books, has discovered and named numerous new species of psilocybin mushrooms, and is the founder and owner of Fungi Perfecti, LLC, makers of the Host Defense Mushrooms.
(Courtesy Host Defense)
From the Host Defense website:
“Fungi Perfecti, LLC is a family-owned business dedicated to promoting the cultivation of high quality gourmet and medicinal mushrooms. In business since 1980, we have been instrumental in developing new technologies and markets for gourmet mushrooms throughout the world.
We keenly sense that fungi will play a pivotal role in new industries of the 21st century. Gourmet and medicinal mushrooms will continue to appeal to organic gardeners, commercial cultivators, researchers, nutritionists, and ecological managers. Indeed, we forsee a quantum leap in their popularity when the public realizes that these fungi:
- Support the immune system.
- Represent a pesticide-free alternative to the traditional white button mushroom.
- Are instrumental in the recycling of wood and agricultural byproducts.
- Can easily be grown by everyone—outdoors in your garden or yard (Mycological Landscaping)—or indoors within greenhouses, solaria, or controlled -environments.
Through our in-depth classes and information networks, we encourage the establishment of a constellation of independent, organically minded growers whose collective consciousness will define this emerging industry well into the next century. We hope you will join us in this endeavor. The future is ours.”
In my homage to Paul Stamets, I used post-consumer waste to reference his story: Campbell’s mushroom soup labels; an empty box of Host Defense supplements; a torn poster from Mexico with the word “experiencia” hand-scrawled in the right hand corner to highlight the fact that much of Stamet’s knowledge is empirical and has arisen not from academia, but rather from his direct investigation and experimentation with mushrooms.
