At least you didn't go and piss on one and get shocked right up the muff
(nor did I, of course, but the male mammalian analogue of such obviously)
Grown mushrooms myself before, and got some experimental stuff going on for this year. Last year, attempted to spawn my lawn with giant puffball mycelium. Hoping come the right season and weather, if I'm really lucky I'd fucking love to get fruitbodies. Hell one would be enough for a lot of meals and enough reason to buy a food dehydrator bigger than my vacuum chamber (not that I'd make food in that thing anyway knowing some of whats been in there:P) and make MRE-versions of something like giant puffball breaded steaks (they can grow to about a meter and a half in diameter and weigh 100lbs, enough to feed several families for a fair while if they ate nothing else but puffball, puffball and more puffball with puffball sauce on top
.)
Never get bored of them though..if only I found them that often. If I get any or see any this year will be taking more spore samples and growing them in petri dishes to culture a high-yield, stable and easy-taking strain if I can. Found two last year and they were only babies, maybe a couple of days old, but already they only just BARELY were able to fit with a large wedge carved off each one (which was just cleaned, dipped in eggy bread batter with a bit of salt and fried crispy on the outside. The biggest bit of the fridge can take something a mite over watermelon size/shape and these buggers were bigger than that after a day or two of growth. Had to scramble down the side of a dam/reservoir to get at them, arresting my descent as a controlled slip-slide by grabbing trees, and clawing my way back up with my prizes. But along with my find of (almost certainly poisonous, mind you, given what I think they are, or are almost certainly relatives thereof which are equally rare or scarcer still) a virulent-red-pored bolete, with a whopping great stumpy turnip-shaped stem, bluing at the moment of its flesh being woulded, brown spore print, growing under oak/hawthorn on whats likely to be calcareous soil and possessed of the most abominable stench of foetid, rotting meat....growing in COLONIES no less! my finds of the year last year, as well as some ergot fungus that'll have to have a date with the lab and a fucking ton of work done with it for a full-blown multi-year intensive R&D project in biotech. I think those boletes are Rubroboletus Satanas (syn Boletus satanas) the Devil's or Satan's bolete, which is threatened all over europe and in the UK as I understand it ,, critically so. If it IS B.satanas, then I need to get a spore sample at least, and some photos, plus old fruit bodies that have developed and spread their spores to reproduce for preservation and sending to Kew gardens, because it'll be of national importance with respect to conservation. All the close relatives in the Rubroboletus clade (Type species R.satanas, moved from Boletus with the majority of taxa retaining their species epithet and their genus epithet relocated to the new genus afaik, to cover for the most part large, generally quite toxic, even dangerously so, only one known death though, turnip-shaped stems and a variety of lurid colors, generally very large or large size, squat fungi, closely related to Boletus satanas sensu Phillips such as B.rhodoxanthus, B.satanoides, I think B.dupaiinii, and quite a few others, but all very, very rare here. Red listed in several european countries and possibly even bordering extinct in some, here possibly, but not quite extinct, certainly if its what I think those were, two or three years in a row, some mycologists and conservationists with some clout need to get behind it.
Smelled absolutely unspeakable, as devil's boletus, especially older specimens are meant to. Like rotting flesh, putrescence, and there were a fair few of them too. Normally you'd be lucky if you ever saw one. Not in a year. In 20 or 30. I've only ever seen it once before and yet if I'm right here the buggers were sprouting up overnight at the edge of a grassy little parkland by a ditch, along with some common gasworks Tricholoma (T.sulfureum, so named for its strong distinctive smell like coal-tar)
My bitch-processing an oxime being worked on (similar to an N-hydroxylamine but with a double bond between the carbon and nitrogen, the carbon connected to an aliphatic/cycloaliphatic chain, that is, by reaction of deprotonated hydroxylamine with a carbonyl compound of aldehyde or ketonic character). Its just SO viscous that it adheres like thick, cold syrup, only gluey-er to the flask whilst trying to remove the water (needed if one is going to chuck sodium in to an alcoholic solution of course to reduce the bugger). Sticks to separatory funnels, gloves, sticks to everything. Had to blast the vacuum takeoff adapter I was using with pressurized degreaser spray to grease it up. And will doubtless have to extract with solvent instead of boil off the water under vacuum at room temperature (my pump when its behaving will fairly easily boil H2O at 20-30 degrees C, when its behaving. Can't wait to get another one though, I so want and need a better vac pump)
Insoluble in water, but they are known for being kinda notoriously difficult to crystallize, and liking to oil out, although thankfully its often unneeded if its clean enough, and oily oximes can still be reduced to amines w/ sodium in ethanol, n-butanol and similar systems involving sodium or potassium metal in alcohol, producing the alkoxide and hydrogen, reducing the oxime to an amine in the process)
Although a reaction to be rather careful performing of course, bringing the alcohol solution to reflux, turning off the heat, using DRIED alcohols, and slowly adding each gram of sodium needed in the form of some 25-30 pieces, at a rate which keeps the mixture at a rolling boil under the heat produced in the reaction, once brought up to a reflux temperature beforehand. Since wet oxime would of course, behave rather messily with the alkali metals, and not to mention protonate the alkoxides formed to the alcohol instead. And have a good chance of going 'woomph!' leaving one with a distinct lack in the eyebrow department unless of course wearing a full face shield as I do just in case of such events)
