Introduction to the project

Introduction:
Mushrooms are a common term originated from France describing fleshy macroscopic reproductive structure of fungi. (Chang, 1994) Now some members of the Classes Basidiomycota and Ascomycota are known to produce mushrooms. The mushroom term could refer to edible, inedible and poisonous species. In daily living, we encounter some common mushrooms, Volvariella volvacea (paddy straw mushroom), Pleurotus spp (oyster mushrooms), Agaricus (button mushrooms) each of which consists of a stipe and a pileus with lamellae on the bottom side, typical of agarics. The common medicinal mushrooms Ganoderma lucidum (lingzhi) and Auricularia auricula (Jew’s ear), in contrast, are having non-lamellae (gills) hymenophores, which refer to the sexual cells-bearing organs for species propagation. Different from microfungi, mushrooms have sizes that are visible by naked eyes and to be picked by hand (Ainsworth, 2001). The economic values of mushrooms are well-discovered and known by people. Some mushrooms are edible and therefore are harvested under management (D. Pilz, 2002; Wang 2006) or greatly cultivated artificially for food and health use. Some mushrooms have medicinal values and are regarded as Chinese medicines and some species can be used as natural dyes. Despite many functions carried by the mushrooms, some of them are poisonous and caused numerous food poison cases throughout the world (Lao, 1999).
Mushrooms reproduce by spores and are usually found in warm and humid habitats. They grow on grasslands, tree trunks and fallen leaves, etc. that can provide them with nutrients to satisfy their saprotrophic mode of nutrition. They are a group of useful and common organisms.
Fungi have a rich diversity in Hong Kong, but they received scant attention before the 1960’s (Lu, 2000). Till now, there is no mushroom record in the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, The Government of Hong Kong SAR. There are two major books on the mushroom species in Hong Kong, ‘Hong Kong Fungi’ (1978) and “Hong Kong Mushrooms’. The latter book is written by Chang Shu-ting and Mao Xiaolan in 1995 and published by The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The book “Checklist of Hong Kong Fungi” was published by Fungal Diversity Press in 2000. However, the mushroom species recorded in that book are totally adopted from “Hong Kong Mushrooms” without deleting those non-existing species or adding in new species. Also, there are very few websites about Hong Kong mushroom species for the public. Basing on the book “Hong Kong Mushrooms”, reviewing websites and journals about Hong Kong Mushrooms species, this project aims at creating a more informative and updated online database, which is easily assessable for the public. As visiting “Blog” is a popular way for the public to exchange information or to attain knowledge, the online database would be in a format of a Blog, with the hyperlink: http://hkmushrooms.blogspot.com/. Having a mushroom species database in the form as a Blog can also make the information interactive and it is easily revised and updated. The Hong Kong Mushroom Blog hopefully can raise public concern on mushroom diversity, as well as can prevent poisonous cases by giving more information about mushrooms characteristics to the public.