Last fall, my husband asked Jocebeane if she knew what to call people who study mushrooms -- she replied, without hesitation, "Strange." (the real answer is mycologist!)
Well, the Beane family is indeed strange because we are fascinated by these crazy fungi. We had a particularly wet summer in 2007 and by the fall all sorts of mushrooms were springing up in everyone's yards. Baby Bean and I rushed to the bookstore to get some field guides and began trying to identify them. Some people get interested in mushrooms because they want to find wild edible sorts, and many of the guides are geared toward this. We NEVER eat mushrooms we find, as they are notoriously hard to identify with certainty, and many poisonous kinds look much like edible kinds. Mushroom study is kind of a frontier science, as many are still unidentifed, and scientists still don't understand mushrooms completely. Much information is still collected by amateur scientists and some of the best guide books are written by amateur experts. (by amateur, I simply mean non-professional).
We have had wet, cool weather for weeks, so mushrooms have been springing up everywhere! Here are some from our yard:
The only way you can make a certain identification of a mushroom is by taking a spore print of the cap. You remove the cap of the mushroom and place it on white or black paper (depending on what color spore you think you may get), then cover it with more paper and weight it down for about 12 or so hours. Here is a spore print of the mushroom above; it is not an accurate spore print, as I made it about 12 hours after the mushroom was picked, but it is interesting:
Doesn't the print look like a pressed pansy? And look how dark the cap has turned! Weird!
I think Alice thinks the whole thing is kind of weird!!
11 comments:
That is so very cool. I have never seen so many different mushrooms before.
My mom and I feel we are starting to grow some on ourselves with all the rain we've had!
My handsome Malamute BF in Iowa had his mummii send my mom some wonderfully yummy morels last year! Mom said they were SOOOOO good!
Tank woo fur sharing your 'shroomie pikhs! They grow lots of 'em about an hour and one half from here in Pawsylvania!
Hugz&Khysses,
Khyra
Those are beautiful photos, and I really like the spore print. I know very little about mushrooms, but I have a couple of friends (also amateurs) who know a lot - I think fungi are really interesting. And one of my friends grows shitakes - that can be lucrative (it's a lot of work to set up though).
P.S. I think the spore print would make a nice piece of artwork!
We say it's always good to be interested in what's happening in nature all around you. The print looks really interesting! Beautiful actually!
Alice, you look cute in the picture. Mom wants to plant a nosekiss, be careful!
Very fascinating. Those are some really cool pictures.
OOooh, a fellow 'shroom lover! We're a bit interested in this too, a while ago we wrote about razor strops that grow in our woods....we also get chanterelles, oysters and French buns, but as you say, they are so difficult to identify and when we discovered that mushrooms actually have very little nutritional value we decided it's just not worth the risk! We also get magic mushrooms growing in the park, which would explain alot....we make sure the dogs pee all over them, hehe! Hoping to get a home mushroom growing kit when we get more space though. Interesting post with lovely pictures :D
To answer your Qs....Rosie is still in heat so not getting out and Gabbi is on a training line as she's recently become a little too cocky and confident and she can't be trusted not to disappear!
Only Rosie & Gabbi go to classes now, Alfie has passed the highest level and Snoop is almost as good as Alf though he hasn't done all his tests.
Hey! We've given you an award. Stop by our blog sometime and pick it up, ok!
I am horrible at explaining things, especially computer stuff, but I'm gonna give it a shot. To embed links within a post on blogger, first you type the word you would like to create a link for. Next, highlight the word and go up to the menu bar where you can change the fonts and formatting...... click on the icon that looks like a globe with a chain link (it's between text color and left align). Then just type in the url in to the box.
I like to go to the page of the person or site I am linking and copy their url from the address bar, then paste it. Just make sure you don't have http:// twice.
I hope I've explained that clearly. If you have any questions just let me know!!!
Fungi are a fun interest (but I get the weird bit). Did you know we're more closely related to mushrooms than plants?(us animals) or that the mushrooms we see sticking up of the ground is just a small part of the fungi sticking up of the ground for sexual propagation purposes?
The WriggleButt(Nerd)Mom
You and Baby Bean are really good at this mushroom stuff. What great pictures; and really interesting. Who would have thought?
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