Well, mycorrhizals (mycorrhizae) are almost everywhere, except presumably ice, uncolonized rock, oceans and under bodies of water too wide/deep for the hyphae to go under and come back up the other side. But when you say "all soils" I start thinking, well, are there any soil environments harsh enough that there would not be any mycorrhizals? - In the news recently there were some fungi isolated from an area heavily contaminated by mining leftovers, but I don't know if they were fungi that form mycorrhizals or even if they were, if they would do that under those severe conditions. - There are fungi such as truffles which thrive in desert areas, and the truffles I'm familiar with are mycorrhizal, but would the desert varieties have a different life strategy? - Few plants, mustard for example, don't have some kind of mycorrhizal partnership, though they may still have endophytes on/in their roots which is sort of similar. So anywhere there are plants there would be mycorrhizals. Interesting stuff :-)
in fallow soils I am suspect of mycorhizzal populations and I am inclined to add a blend of endo and ecto myco to rejuvenate when planting new landscapes.
I suspect that the concentrations of mycorrhizals would differ from soil to soil depending on plant types and the right conditions what ever these condtion would be.
Do the commercial supplies of ecto/endo mycorrhizal fungi indicate on the label what species are in it? I'm guessing the endo would be Glomus? But very curious what sort of ecto would be used, would be considered "universal" enough to be a commercial preparation?
There are lichens (though poorly developed) as far south as 86 degrees south in the Queen Maud Mountians, southern Victoria Land, ANtarctica (that is approxiamtely 240 nautical miles from the south pole). There are not (to my knowledge) lichens on all the ice free rocks of continental Antarctica but there has been microbial life found so lichens may exist as (undiscovered) endoliths. That being said the lichens are not in soil, there are on or in rock.
It's never occurred to me to ask whether any lichens are mycorrhizal, I've always assumed none were. But certainly it could be possible with some of the more soil based species, although theoretically they are getting what they need from their algae. Anyone know?
My "Roots" product from Terralink does specify the 9 different ecto and 9 other endo types along with the #/gram of inoculant. I've talked with Dr. Mike about ectos, and the most commonly used species, Pisolithus tinctorius is a very good colonizer of a great number of host species. The ectos are overall much more specific to hosts than endo types, but hopefully the manufacturers are propagating the better adapted types and have a good chance of matching up with most ecto hosts in cultivation. The endo in this mix are 7 different glomus spp, and 2 gigaspora, for what that's worth. Can't remember seeing any product with a better variety of these in one mix. I do feel more confident with all these than just the competitive product that is only glomus intraradices...tho the concensus seems to be that that is the "best" single species if you had to pick just one.
Thank you Growest! This gives me some interesting things to pursue further, particularly as I know very little about Pisolithus.
Seems it was the USDA mycology team website - but I snagged a few images that were cool. These few are not copyrighted best I could tell.
I would think mycorhizal fungi are not inherient in all soils. YOu would need to define soil first but mycorhizal fungi (at least in temperate forests) are reliant on soil organic matter and as such "soils" of extreme environments may lack organic matter. Of course soils lacking organic matter may be better called sand etc. not soil. There are a number of texts available on mycorhizal fungi morphology. They contain similar phots to what M.D. Vaden has just shown
