CHATTY PATTY
PRETTY BIRDS
DUNG SMOOTH CAP
YELLOW STAINER
Mushrooms made Mario big in Super Mario Brothers. But in real life, mushrooms are either a delicious delicacy or they are decidedly deadly. When a person goes into the supermarket to purchase mushrooms, the varieties offered are slim. But in the real world, there are infinitely more mushrooms than one would ever find pre-packaged. So if you want more variety, you better learn to identify wild mushrooms.
As some may know, we are trying to learn more about forageable foods and wild crafting. With many wild plants, intuition can help tremendously with what may or may not be edible. If a leaf is rough and corse or jagged and hurts to pick up, it's probably not edible. But with mushrooms, they all sort of smell funny, they all grow off of something dead (after all, their purpose is to help things biodegrade), and they all look equally harmless/deadly. We have been asking many WWOOF hosts if they are expert mushroom hunters, in hopes of going on a mushroom expedition and/or learning a thing or two. What with the recent heavy rains, we were hoping it would be prime mushroom season. Alas, no one is an expert, and everyone has given us the same advice: don't eat anything!
So, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and try to identify the mushrooms we see with the aide of a Peterson mushroom field guide that Annelle and Thurston own. The book lists thousands of mushrooms, and breaks them down according to many categories, including, but not limited to: gilled or not gilled, cap shape, cap size, cap texture, cap color, stem shape, stem size, stem texture, stem color, the amount of rings on a stem, and/or the bulbous nature of the stem's root. In addition to the physical appearance, the mushroom has other traits that help one identify it, including, but not limited to: if it is dry or wet, if it is sticky or waxy, its flavor, and the color of the spore deposits. We found two mushrooms today and think we accurately identified both. The first was the "dung smooth cap," or psilocybe coprophilia. It was small in size, gilled, with a brownish/orangish color, with a very thin stem, and it's spores were a brownish/purplish color. It was easy to identify because the field guide explained they grow exclusively in manure, and we found it in a garlic patch that had been thickly covered with compost and horse manure. The second mushroom we found was harder to identify because we found it in grassy meadow, habitat of many varieties of mushrooms. We were able to identify it as a member of the agaricus genus, but had a very difficult time defining its species. The field guide claimed many meadow mushrooms were edible, and Jen had to dissuade Aaron from tasting it and using it's flavor as an identifying characteristic. Common sense got the better of him, and we relied on other senses to identify it. It was medium sized with closely compacted gills, and had a dry, crackly stem. Its spore print was brown, making it seem like a "meadow mushroom," agaricus campestris, which was edible. The guide said the "meadow mushroom" is easily confused with "yellow stainer," agaricus xanthodermus, which gives off a yellow stain when pierced. When we tore the cap it half, and laid it on a white piece of paper to analyze the new spore print, we instantly saw bright yellow, signifying it was deathly poisonous. Good thing Aaron has Jen at his side to help him.
Only when we're sure of the type of mushroom, and only when we're sure along side with a mushroom expert, will we ever try to eat a mushroom we find in the forest or anywhere...except maybe the farmers market.
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