Who knew that LBMs, or the catch all category of
mushrooms called Little Browns, were the cause of most fatal mushroom
poisonings in the USA. This has been chalked up to their benign
appearance (something so small, so bewitchingly parasol shaped couldn't be
bad!), and unlike the amanitas or false morels, they are so freaking
available. I am going to suggest
foragers go to the experts HERE.
It's a link to the Missouri Department of Conservation's poisonous
mushroom catalogue. Very attractive, very informative, and a lot of
interesting links about the woods, and how to make it out of them in without
breaking your in or outsides)
As
for the LBMs you see up top, I am the opposite of bummed about their presence
in the soil. They are the fruiting body evidence that the mycelial
culture that we deliberately introduced into our soil mix is still alive.
Paul Stamets, the revered mycologist and my
former teacher, described mycelium as the internet of the soil, the
facilitator of underground information exchange in between plants and the nutrient transfer from soil to roots. Mycelium is a mass of single
cell wide, threadlike structures known as hyphae, and the hyphae germinate from
mushrooms spores (that powdery stuff that gets on your hands when you rub the
gills of a mushroom cap). It spreads under the ground like a spider web,
mirroring the pattern of a cracked windshield. In Oregon there is a
mycelium matt that covers over 2,400 acres and may be the largest single living
organism in the world. In his book Mycellium Running, Paul
Stamets says that this enourmous fungal mat had dispatched the forest above it
multiple times to build up a soil layer for its future hyphae
limbs. How?, I have no freaking idea. Go HERE
to see Stamets talk about how he cured his stutter at 16 with psyilocibes, and
to hear some incredibly hopeful information about how mushrooms are capable of
repairing a great deal of the damage we have inflicted on our environments.
Stayed tuned for an attempt to grow edibles up top using wood palettes and the
water run-off from the hood fans. K
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