Humans have cultivated mushrooms for at least 800 years. Chinese farmers grew shiitake on oak logs during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), cutting notches in dead hardwood and placing logs in shaded forest where spores from wild colonies would colonize naturally. That method, waiting for wild inoculation, worked because forests are saturated with shiitake spores. It also took 6-18 months and failed more often than it succeeded.

Modern cultivation began in 1652 when a Parisian melon farmer noticed mushrooms colonizing spent horse manure compost. By the 1700s, Agaricus bisporus (white button mushroom) was grown commercially in limestone caves beneath Paris, where stable temperatures and humidity created ideal fruiting conditions. Button mushrooms still dominate global production, accounting for roughly 30% of worldwide mushroom cultivation by weight.

Saprophytes decompose dead organic matter. They produce extracellular enzymes that digest lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose, the structural polymers in wood and plant stems. Nearly every commercially cultivated mushroom is a saprophyte: oyster, shiitake, lion's mane, reishi, maitake, enoki, king stropharia. Saprophytes are cultivable because you can provide them dead plant material as substrate and control their environment.