SMUT DON'T EAT IT

The story of Chew Chong is not well-known enough (which is to say, I didn't know it until recently so therefore everyone else must be equally ill-informed). Around 1870 (1868, in one version of the tale) he came to the neighbourhood of Mount Taranaki (New Zealand), where native bush was being cleared for dairy farming, intending to start a butter factory and export business, but he saw a niche for a different extractive industry. He started and dominated the export trade of saprophytic fungus to China.

When he died (aged 92) in October 1920, Chew Chong was an honoured member of the community and a wealthy man...

It would make a good children's book, or even a Netflix miniseries. There is a biography.

The fungus in question was Auricularia cornea (or possibly A. polytricha) which is or are so closely related to the Northern Hemisphere A.auriculajudae that only the mycologists can tell the difference, and they're probably making it up. It is 'black fungus' in Chinese-restaurant menus, and 'wood-ear' or 'mouse-ear' in English. The fruiting bodies dry out during drouth but soak up water when it rains and go back to being flubbery and cartilaginous...

And now I have my own, without having to forage!

Well, it's really growing on a neighbour's elderberry tree, but it is near enough to the fence to GET IN MAH BELLY.