IQ, would there be any chance maybe, of a few spore prints of the different species, please? you would have my greatest gratitude, and if you want compensating for the effort then I could compensate you for the favour.
Being ascomycetes, the easy way is just to leave them inside a folded layer of tin foil.
I really, really really would be grateful to you if you would be willing to give, or sell me prints, so I can head to the lab, knock up a batch of nutrient agar, plate some up with some antibiotic-laced growth medium, and use that then to infect suitable substrate and try to grow my own morels.
I haven't had a taste of any for several years now, if you don't count an obscenely expensive little tiny bag of dried blacks , that I used to make a really lovely morel and fly agaric (Amanita muscaria, you will know it, I'm sure, everyone does, even if only as that famous red, white spotted favourite abode of gnomes
Absurdly listed in many mycological identification textbook guides as highly poisonous, but in reality, it just needs the correct preparation; this is perhaps the most versatile mushroom of them all IMO. When boiled, the water thrown away, boiled once again in fresh water, the water discarded, and then cooked, it can be eaten safely, for other uses, it should be heat-cured over very low heat to decarboxylate the neurotoxic poison ibotenic acid into the psychoactive muscimol. Low doses can be used as a relaxant and pain reliever, larger ones to remedy anxiety, relax muscles, or induce a very natural, refreshing sleep with no hangover whatsoever, of course much bigger doses of the cured detoxified mushroom can be used as a hallucinogenic trance-inducer/hypnotic agent, and the dried powdered caps can be put into sauces, gravies, marinades etc. and sprinkled onto meat before cooking to do a truly superb job of enlivening the flavour of meat and other savoury dishes, acting like the mycological world's answer to MSG, also there is a substance in the fly agaric that attracts flies; and an old use of it, was to mash a cap into some sweetened milk and leave it out, if there is a fly problem in the home, they are attracted to it, come to feed, and are knocked unconscious by the sedative/hypnotic, fall into the sweetened milk, and drown. A far kinder death than the use of nerve agents, leaving them to spasm and twitch in agony before dying. ) gravy sauce to go with a good kilo at least, perhaps a bit more, of prime lean beef rump steaks, served with butter-fried shiitake and oyster mushrooms. I just adore that wonderful smoky flavor of morels, especially M.elata.
I have never had the chance to try Mitrophora semilibera before, and very, very VERY rarely ever the white morel, M.esculenta. I can only remember ever having the chance to find and taste a single, very small one, just a couple of mouthfuls. Didn't cook that in a recipe, I just fried it up, so I could savour and enjoy every little nibble to the fullest, and appreciate the flavour uncontaminated with any other foodstuff.
I'm really not financially well off, so I can't offer a large sum, but if you want payment for sporeprints of all the species you have available to provide prints of, but I am totally willing to work something out with you, and offer a consideration for the spores.
Or perhaps, as soon as I get paid, and can order some THF and sodium to finish my task, if it appeals, I could offer, as alternative to currency, some 1-(2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)ethylamine. Otherwise known as 2C-D, one of the phenethylamine psychedelics invented by Alexander Shulgin, the great synthetic chemist, and architect of many hundreds of novel and completely new phenethylamine, amphetamine and tryptamine psychedelic compounds. Following in his footsteps, although altering some of the reagents used to prepare 2C-D by Shulgin in order to get a better yield, The 2C-D is currently at the stage of the beta-nitrostyrene, which only needs that very last step of being reduced to the phenethylamine using lithium aluminium hydride.
I only need to buy some THF or ether to serve as the solvent for the LAH, as well as some sodium metal to dry it properly, as LiAlH4 is extremely pyrophoric on exposure to air and almost explosively so on exposure to water and afaik any other protic solvents, so after the use of conventional drying agents for the (degassed under reduced pressure, then sparged twice with dried inert gas) THF, one then slowly adds sodium metal, under a current of scrupulously dried nitrogen, argon, helium or other inert gas, and distills it over the sodium metal, which reacts irreversibly with the traces of residual H2O, to give NaOH, collecting the now dry solvent in receiving flask full of dry inert gas, with a moisture trap full of drying agents attached to one neck of the collecting flask, and then used to perform whatever reduction rxn it is being used for.
