The Folklore of Mushrooms Growing Like Wildfire

Scientists at Iwate University in Japan wanted to investigate the folkloric wisdom that mushrooms grow like wildfire around areas struck by lightning. They created an impulse voltage generator, which is a fancy way of saying fake lightning machine. And then they exposed shiitake logs that had gone through vegetative growth and been soaked in water for 24 hours to a few sequential, extremely short bursts of really strong electricity from various distances away.

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