Mushrooms

 We are finding mushrooms popping up everywhere in our yard and on our nature walks.  Our children think that Fairies live under them ever since we read this book which has also inspired us to look closer at everything in Nature.  ”How to Find Flower Fairies” based on Cicely Mary Barker’s Fairies is delightful.  Our favorites are the Woodland Fairies with acorns for hats.    Finding mushrooms is as much fun as looking for Easter eggs.  This week, we’ve found various sizes of mushrooms and Ham (6) likes to wonder what the Fairies do with them.  Homes? Stools? Parties? Umbrellas?   Ham insisted there were fairy wings underneath the largest mushroom.  Can you see them?

Kelly turned the house upside down looking for his old field guide for mushrooms.  Yesterday, he bought this book at the recommendation of a local mushroom club: “All that the Rain Promises, and More… A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms” by David Arora.  It is a great guide. We are trying to match our pictures with the ones in the guide and plan to go out looking for more mushrooms.  For our children, the names of them can remain a mystery for now.  It’s the wonder of the mushrooms and fairies that really captures their interest.  Pictured below, Ham is pointing out a large fairy ring of mushrooms surrounding the spot where a tree recently stood.

Ham took this picture.

   

We are teaching our children not to touch or eat any mushrooms on our nature walks. The exception would be chanterelles.  They are easy to identify and we know where to look for them.  A friend gave us a big pile of chanterelles recently. Kelly dried them and made a delicious Country Pot Roast with several re-hydrated chanterelles. Very tasty!  We will get involved in a local club before enjoying any other wild mushrooms!  When we find some mushrooms that are safe to touch, we will make mushroom prints.  This is our art project for this week.  Another great resource for information about mushrooms can be found in the “Handbook of Nature Study” by Anna Botsford Comstock, free e-text here.  See excerpt below.

Ham fascinated with a large Fairy Ring.

   

MUSHROOMS AND OTHER FUNGI
There is something uncanny about plants which have no green parts; indeed, many people find it difficult to think of them as plants. It is, therefore, no wonder that many superstitions cluster about toadstools. In times of old, not only was it believed that toads sat on them, but that fairies danced upon them and used them for umbrellas. The poisonous qualities of some species made them also a natural ingredient of the witch’s cauldron. But science, in these days, brings revelations concerning these mysterious plants which are far more wonderful than the web which superstition wove about them in days of yore.   

 

Fairy Umbrella

   

When we find plants with no green parts which grow and thrive, though unable to manufacture their own organic food through the alchemy of chlorophyll, sunlight, and air, we may safely infer that in one way or another they gain the products of this alchemy at second hand. Such plants are either parasites or saprophytes;  if parasites, they steal the food from” the cells of living plants; if saprophytes, they live on such of this food material as remains in dead wood, withered leaves, or soils enriched by their remains.

 

Thus, we find mushrooms and other fungus fruiting bodies, pallid, brownolive, yellow, or red in color, but with no signs of the living green of other plants;  and this fact reveals their history. Some of them are parasites, as certain species of bracket fungi which are the deadly enemies of living trees; but most of the fungus species that we ordinarily see are saprophytes, and live on dead vegetation. Fungi, as a whole, are a great boon to the world. Without them our forests would be choked out with dead wood. Decay is simply the process by which fungi and other organisms break down dead material, so that the major part of it returns to the air in gaseous form, and the remainder, now mostly hurnus, mingles with the soil.

 

A whole city!

   

As a table delicacy, mushrooms are highly prized. A very large number of species are edible. But every year the newspapers report deaths resulting from eating the poisonous kinds the price of an ignorance which comes from a lack of the powers of observation developed in nature-study. It would be very unwise for any teacher to give rules to guide her pupils in separating edible from poisonous mushrooms, since the most careful directions may be disregarded or misunderstood. She should emphasize the danger incurred by mistaking a poisonous for an edible species. One small button of the deadly kind, if eaten, may cause death. A few warning rules may be given, which, if firmly impressed on the pupils, may result in saving human life.  First and most important, avoid all mushrooms that are covered with scales, or that have the base of the stem included in a sac, for two of the poisonous species, often mistaken for the common edible mushroom, have these distinguishing characteristics. Care should be taken that every specimen be collected in a way to show the base of the stem, since in some poisonous species this sac is hidden beneath the soil. Second, avoid the young, or button, stages, since they are similar in appearance in species that are edible and in those that are poisonous. Third, avoid those that have milky juices; unless the juices are reddish in color, the mushrooms should not be eaten. Fourth, avoid those with shiny, thin, or brightly colored caps, and those with, whitish or clay-colored spores. Fifth, no mushroom or puffball should be eaten after its meat has begun to turn brown or has become infested with fly larvae.