Russula Identification

Day 69: I have to tell you a story...

Russulas are fairly easy to identify as a genus. They're usually big. They generally have a coloured cap and a white stipe (stem). They tend to be brittle, and their gills are large and loose. Edible Russulas have a slightly fishy taste and, as you may already know from my previous posts, the well-known "Lobster mushroom" is actually the overgrowth of a different fungus on a Russula. Cap colour in Russulas can be tan/brown, and those types can be a little difficult to identify down to "species," but a pinkish-red or a purpleish-blue one surmounting a white stipe pretty much says, "I am a Russula," when the other factors are taken into account. Russula emetica is pictured above. The scientific name tells you all you need to know about its edibility, i.e., it has potent emetic powers.

My mother introduced me to mushrooming when I was in my 20s. I assumed she knew what she was doing because she was still walking around, but nevertheless, I only collected the species I could recognize easily on my own. On the other hand, she gathered other types for her table or for drying, including something she called "Blewits." It wasn't until some years later that I found out that a Blewit (Collybia nuda) is blue throughout: cap, stipe and flesh. My mother's "Blewits" were in fact a blue-capped Russula; edible, fortunately for her.

Veins

Day 351: A second foray into my favourite spot yielded up enough Chanterelles for a good fry-up and a large bowl of soup, the amount I usually take when I am foraging. People often tell me that they don't trust themselves to harvest wild mushrooms, and indeed, that caution has its merits. However, there are "beginner" species which are quite delicious, and Chanterelles happen to be among them. So how do you distinguish a Chanterelle from other orange mushrooms, some of which are dangerous? Look at the underside. Where other mushrooms have gills, Chanterelles have raised veins. Sometimes they can look almost like gills, but after a few gathering trips with an experienced mushroomer, you will learn to tell the difference even on narrow-veined young specimens. Or at least most people will. Somehow, my fishing buddy never got the hang of it. When he, his brother-in-law and I used to go 'shrooming, we'd have to check his basket closely, and nine times out of ten, we'd be forced to make him throw away his collection because of some toxic gilled species he'd added in. He was the poster child for the phrase, "All mushrooms are edible...once."

Analysis And Determination

Day 38: Once upon a time, this mushroom was a Suillus. Field guides separated Suillus from Boletus by the shape of the pores on the underside, i.e., Boletus had small round pores and Suillus had open, irregular pores. It was easy to remember (and of course we like that), but then the scientists took a closer look at the dividing line between the two genuses and decided that pore shape wasn't an accurate indicator. Many of the species formerly placed in Suillus were shifted into Boletus as a result. This particular 'shroom was one of the victims of taxonomic flux, and I had to reset my head to accept the new nomenclature.

Science is always moving forward. Advances in technology put DNA sampling within the reach of more professionals, and suddenly the poor botanist would tuck in at night with one species name, only to find that it had changed by morning. The phenomenon wasn't limited to species. Whole new genera were created when DNA revealed that some species we thought of as siblings turned out to be fourth cousins by marriage three times removed. It was as if we discovered that our old friend Mary Smith's brother John was really her grandfather's ex-wife's nephew's daughter's husband. The family tree hadn't just been pruned; it had been cut back to the base and was growing into a many-branched bush.

Yesterday, I had to unlearn this mushroom again. Fortunately its distinguishing visible cues haven't changed, although you do have to use a microscope for the final analysis. As far as this one is concerned, you can line out "Suillus" or "Boletus" in those old field guides. Under its new nomenclature, Xerocomellus chrysenteron can be identified by its cracked, tomentose (velvety) cap, its red-tinged stipe base, its irregularly-shaped open pores, its tendency to bruise blue, and lastly, the telling oval spores which differ from the blunt-ended (truncate) spores of X. truncatus.