June 12, 2005

Resources for the budding Mycophagist/logist. Also don't miss Tom Volk's Fungi! Well, probably not his own. Um.
posted by cog_nate 19 years ago
  • Check out the stinkhorns. Clathrus ruber looks not of this world.
  • When I took biology way back when, my biology professor told the story of going out mushroom hunting in California. As a biologist with a well trained family, he urged them to collect the varieties he "knew" were safe. But when he got back to Berkeley, he took a sampling of what they had collected, ground them up, and fed them to the lab rats. Which died. So, obviously, my main interest in mushrooms is eating them In spite of the fact that my grandparents used to go mushrooming, and would cook up huge batches of very tasty fungi, which didn't kill us, I've been warned off from looking for the wild ones. On the other hand, I do think it fascinating that they break down decomposing tree roots. An old mulberry tree in our backyard has had fungus rings around it for the last few years. It's also been dying in it's core, though it keeps putting out branches after the annual trimming. Not sure how much longer it'll last.
  • We've got a mushroom garden; it's a patch out by the back door that's eternally damp and shaded, inhabited by flaxes and tussock. The mushrooms love it to bits. I've yet to identify them, but somehow I doubt they're edible. When I was a kid of course we'd go out to my grandparents farm and kick those big-ass puffball toadstools around like soccer balls, but someone had told us that breathing in the dust would kill us, so then it became a challenge to force each other to breathe in poisonous toadstool dust. I think that was one of those urban legends though, especially since no one died.
  • Yes, it's true. Mushroom hunting is extremely risky. YOU WILL DIE if you eat mushrooms that don't come from a store. Every year, hundreds, nay, thousands DIE, DIE, DIE. Remember, if you find mushrooms and eat them, you WILL DEFINITELY DIE. Die. As in dead. Don't hunt mushrooms. Tell all your friends how deadly hunting and eating wild mushrooms is. Do it today. Don't delay.
  • Remember, if you find mushrooms and eat them, you WILL DEFINITELY DIE. I'm taking what you wrote as sarcasm, but with a grain of truth in it. If folks want to go mushroom hunting, they have to be damn careful, that's true. But my family has hunted mushrooms for three generations and not a one has gotten sick, much less died (from eating wild mushrooms, at least). The ground rules in my household are: 1) eat nothing that even remotely resembles an amanita (large, white stem, stem ring, white or off-white gills); 2) positively identify the mushroom using at least three reference books and a spore print; 3) if it's still ambiguous after #2, chuck it; 4) cook the hell out of a little bit, then eat it; 5) wait a day or two, and if I'm not dead, cook the hell out of and eat the rest. Chanterelles are now in season here in Kansas. It almost makes the state bearable.
  • After hunting, identifying and eating mushrooms for 20 years, this is what I now say to keep newbies out of the woods. They don't need much discouragement, really. The US is mostly a "mycophobic" culture, with most people supposing that any mushroom growing outside is a "poisonous toadstool." Which is just fine by me. There are a couple of choice edible amanitas, by the way. But your advice, cog_nate, about avoiding that genus is very sound, especially for beginners. Chanterelles (yum!) in Kansas? Under what kind of tree?
  • I've heard of the choice Amanitas, but not around these parts. We stick to Morels and Chanterelles. Regarding Chanterelles, there is almost always an oak nearby. They aren't bunched up near the trunk, but scattered out where the root structure would be. Best part is you don't have to head to tick country to find them; they grow in quite a few locations in Lawrence. Pretty nice.
  • An Oregon scientist and a Kentucky nurse have found the oldest known mushroom, entombed in a 100-million-year-old piece of amber from Burma. A closer examination of the nine-hundredths-inch-long mushroom cap revealed that it had been infected by an ancient parasite, which a second parasite was feeding on. When very-far-in-the-future* aliens dust for life on Earth, I have a feeling that's the sort of thing they'll discover. Only with humans. *why isn't there a word for 'ancient' but in the future? Like the way-future. Megafuture-long-time kinda word.
  • pete, that's a very good question. Also, your very-far-in-the-future scenario gives me the creeps.
  • The word for future ancient is aeons ie. aeons from now, when aliens dust for life on Earth...not eons, aeons, it's that a that makes it futuristic, though how they're going to re-assemble the planet after ye olde Earth shattering kaboome is a puzzlement.
  • I think Ye Olde Petes was referrifying to an adjective, nicht ein noun.
  • Tele-æonical?
  • Ignorance of Time Cube dooms humans, inflicting their own created "word hell".
  • aeonical? aeonic? Aeonic aliens. That's a tumbling conflagration of phonemes for ya.
  • But an æon is just an *amount* of time, and isn't at all related to the future any more than to the past, is it?
  • not according to my patented 30-second Google search, no. Ooh! Ooh! I know! What about "Futon"!
  • Futrancient?
  • Futuriffic!
  • So hey, Pete, if you have a motorized futon that breaks the land speed record, does the motor go, "Futfutfutfutfutfutfutfutfutononononononon and so on"?
  • That is not dead which can eternal lie yet with strange aeons even death may die. *makes spooky face*
  • Posteritorian?
  • Apparently in astronomy, an aeon/eon is actually defined as a period of a billion years. So saying aeons from now would imply at least 2 billion years. I'll admit that it isn't an adjective though. So I'm voting for aeonical/aeonic.The rise of the Great Old Ones is directly tied to the stock market.