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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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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