October 1, 2002
Life is exciting for the fungiphile.
A phone call from fellow Master Gardener yesterday led to an exciting find. Therese Barts called me in the afternoon and told me of an interesting find in their yard. She knew they were fungi but had no idea of what species they were nor what their history might be. My first reaction was that they might be shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus) an edible fungi that is often found in yards, gardens or along road sides. She described it as white, large and turning to black as it got older. Being an addicted fungophile I was quite intrigued. So I drove up to her house expecting to find shaggy manes (also known in some areas as "lawyers wigs").
This what I was expecting.
I came equipped with my basket, a package of wax paper envelopes to store them in when I brought them home and a bit of excitement. Terese and her spouse led me to the side yard of their new home and an acre of sagebrush in blow sand soil. Before the house was built 3 years ago, the sand had been bulldozed onto her lot to make the road and the sand covered the sagebrush and other debris that had been accumulated there through the years.
But this is what we found.
Under
every sage brush there were hundreds of fungi. Most of them were over the hill
and no longer edible but I was able to dig up and collect a basket full of these
Agaricus bitourquis. They are one of the finest edible mushrooms one could ever
collect. They rate above the grocery store mushrooms and are in my opinion are
as equally desirable as the morel.
I was so excited at finding all the wonderful Agaricus that I just piled them
into my basket until it was full. I knew I would have to take quite a while to
rid them of all the sand after I got them home, so I didn't bother to sack them
up individually.
I collected some of the over the hill ones too because I
knew other members of the Mycology Society would like to use them to inoculate a
pile of debris, cover them over with soil and wait for the ultimate harvest
perhaps next summer or fall or whenever we had a good rainfall.
The young ones that we had dug out of the sand when they were cleaned up, looked
like this. Most of them still had the caps closed so there was no problem with
getting the sand out of the gills. Notice how the freshly opened caps have pink
gills while the older ones turned from pink to chocolate brown and finally to
black.
All those that had already opened their caps and the gills might have sand in
them, I cleaned as well as I could and then boiled them. Much of the sand was
then deposited in the bottom of the pan. I drained the liquid away and put it
into a jar so the sand and silt could settle out. The liquid I will use in soup
or stew or something of that sort.
One of the interesting things about mushrooms is that some fungi find that
growing on another fungi is a profitable way of living. These two agaricus fungi
have such a growth growing on them. As far as is known the secondary fungus is
also edible because only a few cases where someone eating such a combination of
species have they been poisoned by them. There are some such combinations that
are considered choice eating. For example, the orange Hypomyces lactiflorum that
grows on Russula brevipes.
There was also another kind of mushroom that looked very different. These are
Montagnea arenaria. a true desert mushroom. They are a gastroid coprinus type
fungus, have dark spores which are not forcibly expelled as most mushrooms do.
They bear their spores on the outside of the small disk like cap on exposed
plates similar to gills. They are not known to be edible because they are
usually tough and dry when they are first seen.
Thank you Terese for the phone call. I will ever be in your debt.
April 26, 2002
A current adventure with Mushrooms.
I made a house call today for a lady
who was having a terrible problem with mushrooms growing in her backyard. She
had redesigned the yard and removed the grass in a large area, installed a drip
system for her large old trees and covered the drip lines with about six inches
of bark mulch. Once it was all installed she began having the problems with
those pesky mushrooms growing all along the drip lines. Every day she would go
out and pick them, throw them out on the mulch to dry before she threw them into
the garbage. Recently she had become worried about the newly arrived squirrels
that she thought might be eating those mushrooms and if they were poisonous,
would be killed. So she called the Garden Center and as luck would have it I
happened to be there. I was asked if I would like to go on this home visit. Of
course, I always love home visits of this kind. Imagine my astonishment when we
went into the lady's back yard that there were hundreds of typical mushrooms
lying on the mulch. They were white or light brown, the young ones had a veil
hiding the gills and when they were broken open the gills were pink, I broke
open the base of the stem and it was pure white and the mushroom smelled good. I
couldn't believe what I was seeing. Hundreds of Agaricus bitourquis. The same
mushrooms that can be found in the woods or at the grocery store.
I have a panfull in the frig waiting for me to prepare them. And a sackful of
over the hill ones complete with worms and chocolate gills to inoculate an area
in the new bed I am going to make just for growing mushrooms. I have the drip
line and the six inches of mulch and can't wait to see these delicious mushrooms
growing in my own yard.
01/03/2003