Mushroom Porn

Funny how going to a mushroom fair can enhance your perceptiveness (and not in the way some of you are thinking!). Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have noticed these beauties in my own backyard, as they were deep under a rosemary bush.

I’m no mushroom expert, so don’t quote me on this, but I think they are common blewits, Clitocybe nuda. The spore print was a very light yellow/buff. If they are Clitocybe nuda, they are edible when cooked. I’ll just appreciate them for their beauty.

An administrative note: We’re flattered to have been the subject of a comment spamming attack all the way from Cebu City in the Philippines. Hello Cebu City! I’ve temporarily turned on comment moderation until the spamming folks get the idea that most of the visitors to this blog are probably not interested in dubious investment advisers and pharmaceutical sleep aids. Note to the spammers: ship us some durian and we’ll consider an advertising deal!

Make a Spore Print


Making a mushroom spore print is a fun activity for the kidlings and it’s simple:

1. Pick a mushroom (from the wild or the supermarket) and break off the stem.

2. Put your mushroom, spore side down, on a piece of white paper (or a 50/50 split of of dark paper and white paper to check subtleties in the color).

3. Put a glass over the mushroom and wait 24 hours.

The next day you should have something that looks like the picture above. Spore prints can be used as one factor in identification. The above print is from a specimen of Agaricus bernardii that I found growing in the neighborhood and had identified by mycologist Bob Cummings at Machine Project’s Fungi Fest back in January. Agaricus bernardii is a common mushroom found growing in weedy lawns and is a choice edible according to some. My identification skills are not up to eating parkway mushrooms yet.

Speaking of Fungi Fests, the Los Angeles Mycological Society is putting on the 26th Annual Los Angeles Wild Mushroom Fair this Sunday, February 14, 2010 from 10 AM – 4 PM at Ayres Hall at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Mushroom celebrity Paul Stamets will be speaking at 2 p.m. More info on the website of the Los Angeles Mycological Society.

Not in LA? Spend some time reading Mykoweb.com, and excellent and entertaining resource published by Michael Wood, a past president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco.

Shiitake Happens


Well, actually, shiitake doesn’t happen. It’s back to the drawing board for our first experiment in mushroom growing. We ordered a kit and dutifully followed the directions, but a combination of high temperatures and too much or too little water resulted in the result you see above, what looks like a cake with a skin disease. And even if we got a crop the cost of the kit was too high to make the process economical.

The kit came pre-inoculated with spore that, given the right conditions, should have produced a block full of tasty shiitakes. Instead we got what mushroom folks call “aborts”, mushrooms that grow a bit and then stop. Aborts are potentially edible, but you need to pick them before they rot. Picking off the aborts can also prevent the rest of the growing medium from becoming infected with unwanted molds.

It’s now way too hot in our house to grow mushrooms and we’ll have to wait until next winter for any further experiments. We’re going to try some different methods and will report back on the results. Tips from readers are appreciated.

And speaking of reader tips, an anonymous commenter on our self irrigating planter post noted that indoor marijuana farmers have been experimenting with container gardening for years and that Homegrown Evolution would be wise to take a look at the kind of innovation that comes with higher (so to speak) profit margins. Good point. In trying to find better sources for information on small scale indoor mushroom growing (other than the current go-to expert who will remain nameless and who I think is a bit of a hype-meister) I kept coming across books on growing the sort of mushrooms that cause visions of plant gods and lizard people. It’s proof that good ideas often come from the combination of improvisation and subterfuge. Just take a look at prison improvised weapons and booze to see what resourceful folks with time on their hands can come up with. We certainly don’t grow anything illegal here, but we like to keep an open mind when it comes to our sources.

For those who would like to read more about growing mushrooms at home here’s one way to do it.