Spore and sport prints

Last Saturday a neighbour asked me to identify a mushroom. He thought it was a Swiss Brown (Agaricus bisporus) and wanted me to confirm it. I didn't think it was but said I'd conduct a spore print for him. Later that day I found what I thought was a Swiss Brown and added it to the page. My neighbour's mushroom (on the left) left a white spore print, my mushroom (on the right) left a dark brown spore print true to Swiss Brown mushrooms.

Here's what the two mushrooms look like underneath. They are fairly aged. With mushrooms it is easier to identify them when they are younger, however spore prints are extremely helpful for identification and might just help you decide not to eat a particular mushroom that could be toxic.

On other printing news, as one of the resident artists in the local soccer team one of my jobs is to mark out the pitch. On Sunday, just before the games began, this is what it looked like. 

Our soccer club probably has more artists, food gardeners and community gardeners (non-conformists) per capita than any other club in Australia, and possibly one of the only grounds where mushrooms commonly grow amongst the weeds and introduced grasses. Our canteen is developing as a model for healthy community food – this is what I mean by non-conformist.

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More courses available...

I've extended my foraging classes indefinitely through the Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre. But I will also travel to take them in your neck of the woods.

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A new season of foraging walks

Today I took the first group out for a new season of foraging walks around Daylesford. We identified about thirty-five edible plants and a few mushrooms over a four hour walk.

Half way along we stopped for autumn fruit-and-acorn cake that Meg had baked for this inaugural and lovely crew – current students from the Castlemaine Permaculture Design Course. The cake was made from forest and/or garden ingredients – honey, olive oil, acorns, eggs, plums, peaches, quince, apple and rain water. These ingredients came from our home garden or nearby small businesses (Kyneton olive oil and Daylesford honey). Baking powder was used, but this is optional. (See earlier Artist as Family acorn cake recipe. A video showing how to turn acorns into flour will appear on this site shortly. Also please see my videos for turning hawthorn berries into fruit leathers and making dandelion coffee).

Patrick Jones foraging walks 2013

Students were each given notes that I have compiled that give details and uses for over eighty edible and medicinal plants, mushrooms and some fauna common to temperate Australia.

Walks run every Saturday from April 20, 1-5pm (all weather except for torrential rain). A minimum of six people each walk, $30 per person. For bookings call Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre on 5348 3569 or email. 

I will also travel to your community to take foraging walks. Email me for more information. Minimum of six people required.

Some of the edibles we came across today included mallow, plantain, sow thistle, honey fungus, lomandra, chickweed, watercress, slippery jacks, rosehips, hawthorn berries, acorns, sticky weed (cleavers), clover, gorse, dandelions, hawksbeard, dock, fathen, kangaroo apple, wild fennel, black nightshade, vetch, sheep sorrel, calendula, yarrow, wild radish and rocket.

Thanks to student foragers Felicity, Michael, Rita, Em, Natalie and Grace for making the first walk such a joyous occasion.

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Eating wild fungi: fun or foolhardy?

In April 2012, in conjunction with Fungimap, the inaugural Australian Fungi Festival was held in Hobart. Here is the audio of the debate, Eating Wild Fungi: Fun or Foolhardy from my perspective, the second speaker for the affirmative.

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A small video-poem concerning agriculture and well-being

I wrote this poem and took the footage roughly a year ago when in Mole Creek (Tasmania) visiting family. I finished editing it yesterday. Enjoy!

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A ten minute crash course in edible fungi

Two new friends that I met through the community gardens, Dave and Doug (and Doug's lovely son Malachi), came out foraging with me yesterday in pine forest plantations on the edge of town. I asked Dave if he would film our little excursion so we could make a beginner's guide to foraging edible mushrooms.

Identification is critical before consuming 'shrooms. Books and static images are not often enough to identify accurately. I hope this little video document provides enough tips to get you started. And remember, if you're not 100% sure, trust your instincts and do not eat it.



For much of my fungal knowledge attained thus far I owe to my friend Alison Pouliot, who runs courses in south-eastern Australia in autumn every year. Thanks Alison!

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Walking for Food

I've been in Hobart for twelve days staying with my friend Glen, attempting to put together a first draft of all the chapters I've been working on over the past thirty months that constitute my doctoral research work, 'Walking for Food' (working title).

While at Glen's I was able to forage in his local neighbourhood. I brought to our table rosemary, figs, mallow, dandelion, hawksbeard, apples, feijoas, fennel, borage flowers, stickyweed, rosehips, crab apples, and up on Mount Nelson high above the suburbs I came across the one fungus I saw in hobart, the curry punk (Piptoporus australiensis), which I consumed only as sensory delight. Walking and foraging helped me loosen up my sedentary studious body, but I also resorted to quick break outs in Glen's apartment overlooking the Derwent River.

Arriving back in Melbourne yesterday morning I wandered once more disappointingly into The Age while I waited for a cup of tea and read another stupid article on foraging. Will the bourgeoise please take a plate of death caps now. Actually the article was not really on foraging at all but on secreting, privatising and selfishly capitalising on the autonomous food commons. Arseholes!

Photo: Meredith O'Shea

On my last night in Hobart I was a guest speaker at a dinner-debate titled 'Eating Wild Fungi: Fun or Foolhardy', an event that was part of a national symposium of mycologists and fungi enthusiasts that aimed to generate more awareness of the important role mycelium plays in life production. I wrote this little number while at the symposium.

At the dinner I was on the affirmative team with Tasmanian food writer Graeme Phillips and my friend Alison, a photographer and fungi educator who I've been doing an informal apprenticeship with while helping her out with the brilliant workshops she runs. We argued for a return to commonsense and self-accountability, not the continuation of the nanny state. Naturally I found this debate a platform to critique anti-ecological society, its estrangement due to a lost connection with food. We won!

Then after the dinner I hooked up with Glen for a final bash at Hobart nightlife, and headed to the Brisbane Hotel to see the FUN FUN FUN world of the 5678s. They were very cheap, cool and mingled with the common mycelium after the show. I had a chat with bassist Akiko Omo about all things punk, fungus and Hobart.

My love and gratitute to Glen for a wonderful time, and who shot this final peg as an encapsulating image of an awesome journey, at once intellectual and biophysical; metaphoric and metabolic; theory and practice; fun and fungi.

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Greenwash #23 in Trouble - Goodly Spores

To read, click on image and then click again for better resolution.

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What mushroom is that?

I found this mushroom in a pine forest while taking Alison Pouliot's fungi workshop last weekend.

It was new to both of us, so Alison asked if I'd take a spore print and send her the results.

As the spores were white Alison emailed me back saying it may belong to the genus Tricholoma, though she wasn't entirely sure.

Regardless of the genus, the real excitement was that I made my first spore print (thanks Alison) demonstrating firsthand and emphatically the incredible reproductive ingenuity of fungi.

I took this peg today of a small colony of Inky Caps (Coprinus atramentarius) inhabiting ground under our young pomegranate. They are not only autonomous, auto-digesting and self-determined beings in our food garden, but edible too as long as we don't add alcohol to the meal as the combination creates allergy-like symptoms.

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