It turns out that fungus growing termites sometimes cultivate Termitomyces titanicus. This is an excellent scientific name.
CORRECTION:
I assumed they had to work like ants. Wrong! (A fruiting body would only emerge from a dead ant colony not so with these termites) Something about macrotermitinaes nuptial flights stimulates mushroom fruiting. (!) They get covered in pink spores.
And you can eat it!
Hence the species name.
I've been reading about this mushroom and everyone says it's *really* delicious. But, you just need to luck out to try it. It's not really possible to cultivate it.
When a termite colony has a nuptial flight you may get a few to share with the town.
(corrected the reason for fruiting, which is different than in leaf cutting ants. )
Well the termites and ants can do it.
It just requires work on a scale we can't really deal with. Weeding with tweezers.
myrmepropagandist
Barney Dellar (he/him)