Its been quite warm and humid yet sunny (too bright for my eyes really) lately. A little too warm even, although its been an absolutely fantastic season this autumn for fungi, I've been absolutely rolling in wild mushrooms, not all, but many being those good for eating, and I've been pulling in a motherload of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, an excellent medicinal and good psychotropic mushroom, that ever so familiar red capped Amanita with the white flecked cap, well-defined ring upon the stipe and whilst many of its relatives bear a deep, sack-like, well-formed volva at the base of the stipe where it plugs into the ground and connects to the subterranean hyphae (which form an ectomycorrhiza symbiotic association with certain tree species, notably silver birch in particular, although fly agaric goes in for partnership with some kinds of pine trees at times too)
Been getting so many of the buggers down the towpath of a local canal that is festooned with a great many silver birches that I have been having my work cut out big time just preparing them for drying and doing, as must be done with the fly agaric to render it nontoxic and suitable for use as a psychoactive drug, a medicine and also, as I am very fond indeed of using them, in smaller quantities as a spice for cooking with, particularly in chilli con carne, added in quantities of a tablespoonful or so to a big stewpot full of beef steak mince, chickpea, kidney bean and stewed shiitake chilli. Every season I go out picking those, and whilst they MUST be correctly treated prior to being used either as a drug, as a fungi-based herbal medicine and tonic, endurance booster, pain reliever, sleep aid (notably, it improves sleep QUALITY not just quantity while impairing sleep quality as do almost all clinically used sedative-hypnotics), inducer of vivid and powerfully compelling dreams, muscle relaxant; and depending upon the strain and chemotype of the mushrooms picked, and the cause/type of the ailment, they can sometimes be used to break the back of a fever.
I try to go to several different spots I have that produce bucketloads of fly agaric every season, and pick enough to last me throughout the rest of the current season, and on through the next year after they have ceased fruiting. I rarely ever do a chilli or a nice big fat plate of juicy fried steaks without crumbling in a wee bit of Amanita muscaria, the difference in flavour that these 'lil beauties coaxes out into the open is truly mouthwateringly scrumptious, especially the way I cook my steak/chilli.
Some really unusual fungi have been popping up on my hikes and strolls across a local golf course where another of my fly agaric spots is, and an extremely productive one too. I found a really unusual looking Bolete the other day, certainly not an edible species, and if I am correct in my IDing a few prime suspects, its both quite poisonous, and exceedingly rare, so rare in fact that I would never even have dreamt of actually picking it, but if I see another specimen I will be preserving it and taking it down to the nearest university herbarium for an assist with the ID and to deposit my find there, two suspects are devil's bolete, Boletus satanas (edibility: highly toxic, especially when consumed raw, possibly even lethal, as it contains a strongly cytotoxic protein based poison, bolesatine), one of if not THE rarest of all the Boletes that grow here, or the even rarer, probably, B.rhodoxanthus, which has according to one of my several mushroom textbooks, not known in the UK at least at the time that particular book was published.
I NEED a sporeprint badly from one of these, although I may have been able to obtain sufficient spores to take a look under my very, very high powered (2000x with my current lens and objective settings) microscope, a real beast of a model I picked up as an import from india, cost a couple of hundred, an absolute steal, especially as they understated the value whilst sending it over so I had to pay no extra money as a ransom to those bastard sisterfuckers at customs and excise that they did not earn and have no right to demand
My 'scope was originally intended as a workhorse model for a clinical pathology/microbiology lab, so its a real quality piece, and powerful as hell; I've had it a good few years now, and its one of the nicest bits of kit in my lab, at least as far as a single item goes, it's a real top notch arse kicker, that I've never once had prove insufficiently powerful to image something within the ranges of an optical microscope.
The bolete fruitbody unfortunately disintegrated into a putrid, suppurating mass of seething black slime with a most potently offensive stench to it, like rotting flesh; just as the incredibly rare Boletus satanas, the devil's bolete is reputed to do in older specimens. They are meant not to smell too much when younger, and this didn't, but once it got a little older, and before it rotted, the stink it gave off was MOST unpleasant. If it is a devil's bolete, although B.rhodoxanthus looks a lot closer to the mark, then the oft-cited factoid in the guidebooks about the stench is pretty accurate, I wouldn't have taken the spore samples in my bedroom, or even the lab. My room is still airing out days later to try and clear out that sickening, filthy, reeking miasma of decaying meat. But of course these are so incredibly rare, as are many of the Satanas-like grouping within the genus Boletus that I have never had the chance ever to see one before. By god's bloody nails though that stink is something else, jesus H, noxious doesn't even begin to cover it. But I am determined that I WILL identify this find, it may be too important to the world of mycology not to do so, although as I said, I wouldn't have picked it had I known it to be B.satanas or B.rhodoxanthus, the stipe of the former though is usually much fatter, more turnip-shaped and reticulated, especially around where the stem
There were two of them, in amongst a patch of bay bolete and cep (Boletus/Xerocomus badius and B.edulis respectively), tasty and much sought varieties amongst the many that are very popular and eagerly sought for by a good number of wild mushroom enthusiasts, myself not being least amongst them, thought I was just picking another one of either of the above, the shape being similar, until I turned them upside down and saw the vivid blood red pores in contrast to the white pored ceps, and the yellow tubes possessed by the bay bolete; nearly dropping them in utter astonishment.
Another very very rare fungus I found this year on a hike is Pisolithus tinctorius, the dog shit fungus, so named because it looks like a solidified, hardened lump of ed milliband
full of david cameron thats solidified and gone powdery, this being the spore mass in the fungus, or the useless fucking faggot cunt in the case of the subhuman sack of shite that the fungus resembles and is named for. P.tinctorius was also at one point used for dyeing [of textiles] (where as D.cameronus is a total failure at this, and his dy(?e?)ing would be an excellent occasion
)
Pisolithus tinctorius is more common in north america, but very scarce here (Phillips et. al.)
Also seen some specimens of a rare species of waxcap (Hygrocybe and Hygrophorus, Hygrophoropsis) walking round a reservoir, Hygrocybe calyptiformis, a smallish waxcap with a narrow, thin white stem, and pink gills/cap, edible, although due to its rarity I have never eaten it, but rather left it to reproduce, its named on red-lists of species throughout europe, as a quite threatened species.
Icequeen, you any good with Boletes? I could use some help identifying this unusual red-pored species. I've got good detailed description, as well as some pretty good clear photos taken when it was not long out of the ground.
