MMM 361: prints

Ever done this?  It’s kind of fun and you can do it with any gilled mushroom cap.  Often useful in species identification.

Right Up The Equinox

Apparently there’s a difference between equinoxi and solstici. Who the heck knew that? I do know the difference between shit and Shinola of course.

It’s not like you can win money on Jeopardy with information like that, right?

MMM 360: no fungal ideas today

Not sure if photoshopped or Latin American

MMM 359: dead man rising

Dead man’s fingers.  Don’t eat, don’t touch, consider killing with fire while wearing a respirator.

MMM 358: good heavens, how many of these do I still have?

The binders still aren’t empty, sadly.

MMM 356: these aren’t roots

Most of the fungal mass on this earth isn’t fruiting bodies, it’s this stuff.

MMM 355: movie monster

These images may look like harmless fruiting bodies, but they are related to (and possibly part of) the world’s largest living organism.  I give you the honey mushroom.  A saprophitic species that can kill or essentially underpin enormous swaths of forested land in a sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic relationship.  In the US Pac NW and northern Michigan, it’s mostly a symbiote.  In the UK, it appears to be eating whole forests.

MMM 354: cubes

The following pictures are of a naturally-occurring fruiting body that you may have looked right past.  They grow everywhere in US these days, the spores having spread by natural means and the hands of man.  They are also a Schedule 1 controlled substance at the time of this writing.  For reference, fentanyl (aka “the opiod epidemic”) is a Schedule 2, and marijuana is basically off the table for federal enforcement in many states.  You could have these by accident and be charged with a crime.  I wanted to cover them here because they have a superficial resemblance to last week’s mushroom: the death cap.  They bruise differently (blue vs none) and have purple-brown gills and spores (death cap has white gills and spores), though, so differences can be seen when inspected.

Psilocybe cubensis, likely being grown illegally based on the setting.

MMM 353: Don’t eat, don’t touch!

Today I bring you the most commonly eaten wild, poisonous mushroom: the death cap.

If you’re going foraging, this is one to know absolutely, because, well, they can f*cking kill you.  It’s the reason I don’t eat any wild mushrooms with gills.

Fun article, for those interested.

I’m fairly certain these were growing in part of my old yard at one point.

And possibly in my new one as well.  Might even have seen a faerie ring of them up the road, but those are more likely to have been the actual “faerie ring mushrooms” in this part of the state.

Anyhow, if you see these, don’t eat them.  They’re in the amanita family, same as the hallucinogenic and toxic amanita muscaria, but so much more toxic that even reindeer won’t eat them (reindeer love amanita muscaria, and their urine after eating them is thought to be one of the early sources of go-juice for Siberian shamans).  I have no idea how to eradicate them if you do find them, but fire probably isn’t enough.

Update: great meme I neglected to add initially

Monday Morning Mushrooms – 3,14159.00

Happy Martin (LK) Mushroom Monday!!

Whose turn is it to make breffiss?

Everything pies are always a great way to celebrate MLK Day amirite?

For the bacon and eggs crowd – here ya go, ya boring bastards.

Now onward and upward to mushroom stuff that MJ (aka Mushroom Junkie) soooo looks forward to on a crisp and beautiful Monday morning.