Textbook Specimen

Day 361: During our mushroom foray yesterday, I showed Ed a few of the other species I can recognize easily, and elaborated on what field identification points I was using to make my determination. He is anxious to learn about mushrooms, so of course the first lesson I gave was this: "Never eat a mushroom if you're not 110% sure of your identification." There were a lot of unknowns along the trail, but also Russulas of different colours and good ol' Lobsters, which gave me the opportunity to explain why I don't eat them; to wit, Lobster is a fungal overgrowth which largely occurs on Russulas, and you don't know which Russula may lie beneath the Lobster's bright orange coating. Some Russulas can cause severe gastric distress, so I avoid Lobster entirely. Then as we walked along, we suddenly came into a patch some 50' in diameter which was heavily populated with huge Amanita muscarias, some with flattened caps as large as dinner plates. They were the only ones we'd seen on the entire hike, and included this textbook-perfect specimen. I took the opportunity to expand Ed's education on field points, but also to explain that some mushroom toxins (particularly amanitotoxins) linger forever in the liver, continuing to damage the organ beyond the toxins' immediate effects. That said, there is no 'shroom so photogenic as this species, so I hunt them every year...with my camera.

Picking Mushrooms

Day 135: I've been picking mushrooms without setting a foot outside! "Pick" in weaving terminology refers to one pass of the shuttle, and of course that's the context here. Since I was still trying to work my way through a pile of red thrums, Amanita muscaria was a good candidate for using them up. I tried to be as botanically correct as krokbragd limitations would allow, and although I wasn't able to depict the annulus without the stipe being too tall, I did include the volva (cup) which is characteristic of Amanitas in general. After getting these off the inkle, I warped up with a generic "little brown mushroom" somewhat suggestive of a Boleta. The red thrums are history now, but I have eight yards of warp measured to be hung on the bonker as my next project, hundreds of little Amanitas anxious to erupt.

Amanita Muscaria

Day 364: Amanita muscaria is arguably the most recognized mushroom in the world, and its status as such pre-dates the "Mario" games by centuries. It is very distinctive in its textbook morphology: red cap dotted with white spots, a skirt around the stipe and a bulbous base, but as it ages (or in some cases, where soil conditions affect its growth), the cap may be yellowish or tan, leading to possible confusion with other Amanita species. That said, it is poisonous, and those who have experimented with its hallucinogenic properties have undoubtedly done some measure of damage to their livers with the toxins which accumulate there. But it is a beautiful thing, this "toadstool" of faerie tale, especially when caught in its prime. This specimen had only recently popped through the duff and hadn't had a shower to wash away the debris of its birth. Nearby, a few salad-plate sized companions had fully opened, and had tipped over sideways from the sheer weight of their flattened, fading caps.

Mushroom Band

Day 84: The problem, you see, is that there are so many projects asking to be done, and only one of me to do them, and while I'm doing them, my brain is working on developing future projects, and...well, I'm sure you understand my dilemma. Tablet weaving has again captured my attention after a forty-year absence from the art, and after turning out a couple of 1-inch bands, an idea began rattling around in my brain about mushrooms, Mario mushrooms, those iconic red and white Amanitas found in faerie tales and forests. Now the internet is full of a lot of things, but tablet-woven mushrooms eluded my most diligent searches. Therefore, I would have to create my own. I borrowed sparingly from an existing draft which bore no resemblance to mushrooms in the slightest, and voila! I have mushrooms on mounds of moss with sky (blue, atypical for the Pacific Northwest) behind them. I plan to make a series of bands, all different, to stitch together as a bag or throw pillow top.

Warts And All

Day 4: I have to admit that when I went out for my walk on Wednesday, this is what I was looking for: a textbook specimen of the most widely recognized mushroom in the world, Amanita muscaria. Its warty red cap graces the pages of illustrated children's stories, shows up in video games and cartoons, sets old hippies into thinking with some regret about their younger years and how they had no regard for their potential longevity at the time. Like other Amanitas, muscaria bears a toxin in its tissues, one which causes hallucination in the short term, organ damage over time because it is not excreted. It accumulates in the liver where, in the long run, it's likely to take a few days, weeks, months or years off a person's life. I could veer off on a tangent here to talk about how drug abuse may have led to our present political situation given that a large percentage of voters are of an age which suggests they might have indulged in experimentation during their early 20s, wreaking havoc not only on their organs but on their minds, but that's another story. Suffice to say that my love of Amanita muscaria, warts and all, lies exclusively with its potential as a natural-history subject and in its photogenic properties.

Amanita Season

Day 338: Super Mario aside, you don't want to muck about with Amanitas of any sort, and they're out there right now, their emerging caps waiting to deceive you into thinking they're a different (and perhaps edible) species. Every year, I get photos from my readers asking, "Can you identify this mushroom for me?" or sometimes, "Is this one edible?" First of all, I am not going to identify a mushroom for you from a photograph unless it is one of the unmistakable "beginner" species like Shaggymanes or Chanterelles, or unless it is obviously a poisonous sort like the distinctive Amanita. In fact, if you ask me to identify a 'shroom from a photo, you're going to get my customary one-liner: there's a reason the Mycological Society used to call their annual dinner the "Survivors' Banquet." Even the most innocent-looking mushroom can be deadly, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line when your liver and kidney functionality starts to fail. Your organ tissues retain those toxins, and there's no way to clean them out. If you aren't "105 percent" sure of what you're picking, do NOT put it in your basket where it can contaminate other mushrooms. If when you get home, you discover that you picked one unidentified 'shroom accidentally and tossed it in with your delicious Chanterelles, throw out the whole damn batch! I'm tellin' you, you don't get many second chances where 'shrooms are concerned. As for you folks who like to get high on the hallucinogenics, your Darwin Award is waiting.

No Old, Bold Mushroomers

Day 5: It's often said that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots. The same is true of mushroomers. While no experienced mushroom hunter would confuse these two fungi, an over-enthusiastic beginner might easily do so with unpleasant, even tragic results. That's a puffball on the left, good eating if picked before the interior starts to turn brown. On the right is a young Amanita muscaria, your classic "toadstool," dangerously poisonous.

There are a number of edible and choice "beginner" mushrooms, but even those may sometimes prove challenging to novice collectors. I used to go out chanterelle-picking with my fishing buddy and his brother-in-law. The brother-in-law knew his stuff, and often came home with his basket full of things I didn't feel I could confidently identify. On the other hand, although he and I had showed the third member of our team the chanterelle's characteristic veins (as opposed to gills), we invariably had to sort through his gleanings to remove Galerina autumnalis (poisonous) and anything else which just happened to be orange. Sometimes, we just discarded the whole lot out of concern for cross-contamination.

While there is no scientific difference between a "mushroom" and a "toadstool" (it's only semantic), knowing whether a species is edible, poisonous or just not worth the bother is a crucial distinction when harvesting mushrooms from the wild. Be "105%" sure when you pick. You might not get a chance to say, "Well, I guess I was wrong about that one."

Faerie Tables

Day 4: Yesterday's mission to Nisqually State Park gave me a chance to check on the status of the Amanita muscarias I'd observed a week or so ago. Many of them had been close to the end of their cycles at the time, and of course those have deteriorated even further. However, some of the more viable fungi have now spread their caps in the classic "toadstool" shape. Can't you just imagine a toad or frog perched on top of one of these? Or maybe sitting underneath it? Or maybe your fancies run in the same direction as mine to think of these as "faerie tables," especially when they are laid with such homey checkered "tablecloths." Logic insists that faeries, therefore, must have digestive systems which can process the poisonous alkaloids contained in these storybook 'shrooms, or maybe that's why there are so few sightings of the fair folk these days.

Textbook Specimen

Day 357: The Amanitas I found during my hike day before yesterday were so lovely that I can't resist sharing another one with you. I would describe this one as a "textbook example," but for the fact that the cap isn't the brilliant red one normally associates with Amanita muscaria. That said, it is well within the range typical of the species. Age, weather and soil chemistry may all affect an individual mushroom's colour. In this image, the morphological features are readily apparent: the cap bearing remnants of the veil (the "spots"), and beneath it, the annulus (ring) of tissue appears like a tutu around the stipe. The annulus is also a remnant of the veil, breaking free at the rim of the cap as the mushroom expands its "umbrella." At ground level, the cup-like volva is visible with the stipe arising from it. When immature, the veil and volva surround the developing mushroom entirely, giving it an appearance all too similar to edible puffballs. When the two fungi grow in the same area, care must be taken when collecting puffballs to eat. Each one should be cut in half vertically to be sure that the interior tissue is uniform throughout. Amanitas will show evidence of stipe/cap structure in a cut specimen.

Toadstool Territory

Day 356: Easily the most recognizable mushroom in the world, featured in faerie tale books and video games, Amanita muscaria has a dangerous beauty. Like other Amanitas, it contains alkaloids which affect liver and kidney function, a warning which I'm sure some old hippies are now wishing they'd heeded instead of ingesting the mushroom in order to obtain its hallucinogenic effects. Best to appreciate this one where it stands, folks. It'll get you in the end. That said, muscaria is gorgeous, and I have seldom seen as textbook-perfect specimens as I found during an invasive-plant patrol yesterday. Typically, this "toadstool" has a bright red cap, although older specimens may fade to golden or pale yellow. The spots wash off with rain, but the annulus (a ring of tissue around the stem which is visible in fully open individuals) is a good indicator of genus.

Now a bit of back-story...when my husband and I were preparing to move onto his grandparent's homestead property near Olympia, we did a patrol of the acreage to see what issues might be hiding in the timber. We came upon a picture-perfect grouping of muscaria at the edge of the woods, and immediately decided to call the ranch "Toadstool Acres." The land grew several species of Amanita, but the only consistent crop of edible fungus it produced were delicate puffballs. Puffballs are quite tasty (although the species we had required "shelling" like a hard-boiled egg), but they are easy to confuse with young, unopened muscaria. Before I could fry up a batch, each puffball had to be cut in two vertically to check for the telltale outline of a muscaria's stem and cap. Puffballs are a uniform texture throughout. There's a reason one local mycological society used to hold an annual "Survivors' Banquet." Many mushrooms don't give you the opportunity to make a second mistake. Even those which don't outright kill you may have long-term consequences.

MeadoWatch Muscaria

Day 355: Is there a person alive who doesn't associate this mushroom with faeries, children's stories, video games? How did that get started, anyway? Well, it all began in Europe...

Although the North American version of Amanita muscaria goes by the same scientific nomenclature as the European species, there is something in its makeup which qualifies it poisonous on this continent but edible in Europe. The fools among American mushroom collectors will tell you that it is a hallucinogen and will give you a high but neglect to mention that the long-term effects of the amanitoxins contained in it include liver and kidney damage which may not show up for years and may lead to an untimely demise. The European muscaria contains fewer of those alkaloids, although they are not entirely absent. The amount is sufficiently lower to place muscaria among the edible species in Europe, and its recognizability led it to become the poster child for "mushroom." Many European children's books contained illustrations of muscaria, and when European settlers came to North America, their use of it as the stereotypical mushroom of faerie tale continued.

This can all be very confusing to a child or even to an adult. The bottom line is that you should leave this one where it sits. I won't go into another rant about being "105% sure" of any mushroom species you pick for your table. You already know that mushrooms can be quite difficult to tell apart, and if you're the kind of person who thinks a 20-minute trip among bright colours and weird shapes is worth paring five or ten years off your life or suffering through dialysis or hepatic collapse, my lecture would be wasted on you.

Longmire Lawn Ornaments

Day 8: It has been a banner year for the Amanitas at Longmire! Dozens of specimens are apparent throughout the housing area and in the lawn at the back of the Administration Building where I work. You can't mistake them for anything else (and that's my lead-in to today's post).

I write a weekly article on the Park's Facebook page and while it generally features some of the rarer wildflowers or lichens, I occasionally venture outside my particular fields into the dangerous territory where the limits of my knowledge are stretched, specifically mycology. I generally steer clear of edible mushrooms lest my posts encourage harvesting, and even when I do publish a photo of an edible species, I emphasize how risky it is for the amateur to gather fungi without an expert's help. Most recently, I posted a photo of what I believed to be a Pholiota species, but was corrected by someone with greater knowledge. Caught out, I chose not to delete the post, but to turn it into a "teaching moment."

Ironically, the subject of my article was not the mushroom itself, but the perils of mushroom poisoning as a result of misidentification. If I had to make a mistake publicly, it could not have happened under better circumstances. I accepted the correction gracefully, and thanked the contributor for expanding my knowledge. The "Pholiota" was properly identified as an edible Armillaria, so although my misidentification denied me the experience of savouring "honey mushrooms," my error was on the side of caution, supporting my own advice: "If you're not 105% sure, don't eat it."

Unlike what happens if you consume an Amanita or other poisonous mushroom, you'll survive confessing to a mistake with no long-term ill effects. Even though it is embarrassing, there is no shame in admitting you are wrong. The shame is in persisting in an error.

Field Guide Specimen

Day 360: If you've been dabbling in photography for any length of time, you may have heard of the Rule of Thirds in which the subject is placed at one of the intersections of an imaginary tic-tac-toe grid, a little compositional trick which leads the eye through an image in a spiraling pattern. Let's take a look at a different style. The Rule of Thirds is used extensively in "art" photography, but when it comes to capturing subject matter in a way which is useful to researchers and scientists, the philosophy of visual flow should be laid aside in favour of centering.

Centering the subject and maintaining a good depth of field allows the viewer to see not only the specimen, but also its habitat. Sometimes it is helpful to know if a plant or fungus is growing in hemlock debris rather than fir needles or some other medium, or to know what other plants may be growing nearby. You should always try to shoot from an angle which allows all the physical characteristics (morphology) of the subject to be seen. "Flat" light is preferable to strong highlights and shadows, so take your pictures on an overcast day whenever possible. My personal preference is to put the camera on a tripod and go with a longer exposure in natural light rather than utilizing a flash.

When you're in the field and have the opportunity, take the time to look for other examples of the species. You might get lucky and find a textbook specimen like this Amanita muscaria waiting for your lens!

Spotted At Longmire

Day 343: Scowling darkly at the bare ground where last week my best specimen of Ramaria araiospora had glowed as red as any stoplight, I was silently wishing multiple forms of harm upon the unknown visitor who had plucked it from the earth. I cursed myself mentally for having posted the location on line, inviting a question someone else answered before I could deflect the inquiry: "Edible?" What sort of lowlife would pick and eat a specimen under study? Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question. They're out there, and in far greater numbers than you imagine.

While not on the scale of illegal big-game hunting, harvesting anything not found in abundance is in my book a crime against nature and science. Worse, it sickens me to think that my inadvertent disclosure of the location led to the destruction of an example of an uncommon species. Now on guard, I will not make that mistake again, but the damage is already done.

To that faceless, nameless miscreant I offer this speckled beauty, spotted also at Longmire. Eat, and wander down the swirling, multicolored halls of hallucination to your heart's content, and when you reach mid-life and your kidneys and liver begin to fail before you've done half the things you wanted to do, remember I told you where to pick them.

Textbook Specimen

Makeup Day 9: With my eye on the goal of Pinnacle Peak saddle, I walked right past this field-guide specimen of Amanita muscaria and only noticed it as I came down the last few steps of the trail before reaching the Stevens Canyon Road. Only once before have I found such a picture-perfect example, and that one fostered the name my husband and I gave to his grandparents' ranch when we inherited it. "Toadstool Acres" was what we called our place, and the photos I took during the late autumn before we moved in became the centerpiece of our Christmas cards that year. Nowadays, I laughingly call this species the "Mario mushroom," and it is easily one of the most widely recognized fungi in the world. The old hippies among my readers will remember it by its reputation as a hallucinogen, a detail which led quite a few members of that era to experiment with it despite the very high potential for incurring liver damage from ingesting the alkaloids. Although not deadly in the short term like its cousin, Amanita phalloides, this pretty little toadstool will get you in the end.

Amanita Muscaria

Day 362: Easily one of the most recognizable mushrooms in the world, Amanita muscaria's bright red cap has lent itself to countless cartoon representations of what a "toadstool" looks like. So what's the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool? Some people use "toadstool" to describe poisonous species like our little friend here, but you would be equally correct if you referred to A. muscaria as a "mushroom."