After a miserable night, feeling really nauseated and being repeatedly, violently sick to pont of almost collapsing several times and doing it at least twice, picked up a refill script for my meds that thankfully contains several average an da few really heavy-duty antisickness meds, plus a big bottle of gaviscon to settle my stomac down, my paim
Thinking that I might, either today or tomorrow go out for my first mushroom-hunt of the season and see what I can find slice up and throw in a pan of salty butter and sizzle me up a free feast of gourmet treats, also had word that the fly agaric mushroom is out fruiting currently at this time of year and that means a longer trip to a local woodland I've liked to haunt since I was about 4-5 and just starting my mushroom hunting hobby to pick those off the golf course attached to part of it and search for the only occasionally to be found, although not rare, yet very special mushroom Macrolepiota procera, the parasol mushrom with its characteristic double ring, long tall stem and caps that can if your lucky get to the size of a plate and which are of the most excellent flavour, truly of all the wild mushroom species I've ever tasted (and I must have eaten hundreds of different kinds at the very least parasols are one of the finest of the fine, the absolute cream of the crop in a foray during which they are found. I am DETERMINED next time I find one or more to obtain spores, and start culturing it on agar plates in petri dishes to create infected spawn with which to infect decaying plant matter upon which these saprobic incarnations of deliciousness feed. Same goes for giant puffballs, if I set eyes on any of those this year spores are definitely going into my collection for cultures. The fly agaric being the famed white-warted, bright red capped and otherwise white Amanita muscaria, famed as a magic mushroom of the norse berserkirs, and as I've found out through careful experimenting after of course first reading up as required, smaller quantities of this poisonous, albeit mildly so, mushroom can be cured and saved for the rest of the year when they do not grow, so as to have a supply for all year round and used either medicinally, as a sleep aid, for inducing dreams, innuring oneself against pain and especially against discomfort caused by cold weather, even biting, bitterly freezing blizzards won't even be noticeable after a mug of honeyed fly Amanita tea, made from the cured, dried mushrooms (I once walked out into a howling, shrieking gale, in the middle winter to go several miles to a shop, on foot wearing nothing above the waist but my lip piercing (which I don't take out), my silver tigers-eye ring before that was stolen and a thin, skintight leather jumpsuit style jacket, left open and flying in the wind, no top, despite the bitter cold and the storm kicking off like fury I didn't even feel the cold. In fact I opened the jacket because it was a little warm with it zipped up.
Planted some pieces of giant puffball in the grass of the lawn of the house last year, don't know if such a simple approach will result in a 'take' and fruitbodies, but I hope so, because not only can they grow absolutely massive (a meter and a half in diameter or more, and weighing as much as a grown man) but, being big enough to feed several families for a fair while if wished they too are to be fed, they are, like parasols, possessed of a truly excellent savoury flavor, being easy to cook to perfection by frying them like steak, cut into big thick slices small enough to fit on a dinnerplate, then once done, quickly dipping them in eggy bread batter with a bit of salt and pepper then flash-frying to batter them, if desired, given a wee bit of cured dried fly agaric cap, and one of the mushrooms parasitic on fly agaric mycelium, a bolete, Chalciporus piperatus, having pores instead of gills, reddish in color on the pores although light tan most of the color and growing with fly agaric under silver birch trees, with a common yellowing towards the very base of the stem, relatively small sized, from a couple of inches across the cap to the size of an open hand and usually quite a short stem, no more than perhaps a half cm thick, a bit narrower but not by much, usually, and usually a couple of inches in height, as the epithet of the species 'piperatus' may hint, they have a fiery hot bite to them, different to chilli pepper or black pepper, and once cleaned, may be dried and stored then ground up in a spice grinder (dried fungi can be real shitters to powder in a mortar and pestle properly, and an electric spice grinder with its rapidly spinning blades on the other hand will grind them to dust in no time.
The fly agaric and peppery bolete go together excellently, since the former acts to cause the taste sensation 'umami' via traces of toxin left in the cured mushroom which activate glutamate receptors on the taste buds of the tongue responsible for sensing meaty, savoury flavours, and this mushroom, once cured (by careful drying of the caps, ideally with the gills sliced off close to the cap or scooped out with a spoon since they contain a lot of water and make the mushroom caps harder to dry, and placing them back (upper surface) facing the layer of aluminium foil then placed over baking trays and left in the oven with it on its lowest possible setting overnight with the door wedged slightly open for water vapor to escape and turning the mushrooms every so often, basting them in any juices they sweat out helps up the quality of the flavour and flavour enhancing effects. Works wonders with meat, especially, or anything savory, works like nature's own MSG, the traces of the compound responsible, a neurotoxin called ibotenic acid left behind after the heat causes this unstable compound, as well as the drying itself, to break down giving off CO2 and leaving behind the psychotropic intoxicant compound within the mushroom, muscimol, there are traces of a cholinergic agonist neurotoxin, a quaternary ammonium compound called muscarine which acts as a peripheral nervous system-selective (being a quat, and charged, it can't cross the blood-brain barrier so is restricted to the PNS only) muscarinic acetylcholine receptor agonist (indeed the receptor itself was named for its binding of this ligand), its toxic, causing nausea, shaking/twitching, vomiting, sweating, tearing, tiny, tiny constricted pupils and blurred vision and diarrhea in large quantities, or in larger still amounts death, by the bradycardic effects it has, slowing the heart rate to a stop. Happily despite the name 'muscaria' and the toxin first being found in this mushroom the quantities present are absolutely miniscule to the point where maybe with a large psychoactive dose one might notice symptoms (buscopan, a peripherally restricted muscarinic AChR antagonist sold OTC for IBS counteracts this perfectly and cannot cause central symptoms such as anticholinergic delerium due to its being a quaternary ammonium compound itself and unable to pass into the brain)
There are mushrooms which do contain dangerous quantities of muscarine, notably the genus Inocybe, the little brown mushroom's little brown mushroom genus, buggers to identify to species level often, and known as the fibercaps. Notorious for the fact that of all the members of the genus at least known in the EU not a single one is considered to be edible. They are ALL either pretty poisonous, deadly, or the edibility of them simply is not known. A few such as I.patouillardii, the red-stainer innocybe or deadly fibercap, as well as I.napipes for example are particularly virulent and contain enough muscarine to kill, have and sometimes do it as well. The red-stainer in particular, is a nasty piece of work, although thankfully muscarine poisoning is easy to treat unlike many fungal toxins and if brought to hospital the victim is likely to survive. It isn't common, but its fair sized for an innocybe, ruddy brownish reddy color like many of the genus but with the distinctive characteristic that its flesh turns red when cut after a little while. It isn't common particularly, although I have collected the species a couple of times but never found them in great numbers, usually a patch of a handful or so fthem. Some Clitocybes also contain it, in lethal levels (C.rivulosa, and C.dealbata, both white, grassland species and considered potentially deadly and unfortunately capable of resembling to the undiscerning eye a good edible, Marasmius oreades, the fairy ring champignon in some of its appearances. But unlike the latter, a tasty edible mushroom the other two, Clitocybe species are hghly toxic. Although not all Clitocybes are poisonous there are some that are reputed to be quite good. I've never found any of the ones meant to be particularly delicious though unfortunately. And there is one. C.nebularis, the clouded agaric which was formerly regarded as edible and indeed IIRC sold at roman markets, but now known that not all can eat it. Some people are more sensitive than others to the clouded agaric, and it'll make them sick, although not fatally so, some people eat it and seem to be able to get away with it. Personally its one I choose not to invite to my dinner table.
And I've also got to monitor a certain local field where some most unusual pored, Boletus type fungi, I think something in the new genus Rubroboletus, created to separate out many of the red-bored, luridly colored and usually blue-bruising (rapidly when cut in many cases near instantly and much darker than the gilled Psilocybes often light blue staining due to psilocybin/psilocin forming byproducts in the mushrooms, a much lighter blue and doesn't appear so quickly either)
These things have whopping big fat squat features, bright blood-red pores from all the way through newly developed and unopened caps when sectioned through to old age, usually a tan to ruddy brown with pale white hints abd traces of yellow, they blue instantaneously when cut into with a knife and are undoubtedly mycorrhizal, I found them in association with a mixed oak and hawthorn thicket growing at the edge in shortish grass. And the stem is short, squat, fat and rounded, shaped very much like a turnip, often wider than it is tall, with a narrowing at each end and a strong, very noticeable in older ones, distinct and potent stench of decaying flesh. The spore color is typical for a bolete, light tobacco brown to tan tobacco brown color but I need a new specimen to collect some spores from on a microscope slide and enough little patches of them to get a good look under the lens of my lab microscope because if these, and they have regrown here for several years, grow again this year and are what I believe them to be, Boletus satanas, the Devil' Bolete, despite bring highly poisonous and potentially fatal (although in some places reportedly they are eaten after thorough special cooking methods, regardless of their foul stench (a single small mushroom had to be thrown out of the house after the accompanying stench of putrescence too obnoxious to remain in the same room, and their being nothing at all about any appearance or character that says 'eat of me, for I am good food'. Since the poisonous principle has found to be a pretty potently cytotoxic glycosylated protein, it is easily believable that the protein is denatured by the very thorough cooking employed. I'd not try them though for sure, regardless of whether the toxin, called bolesatine is or is not destroyed, since they have bollocks all to reccomend them for the table and less still for being appetizing. The important thing, is the rarity of them. This patch, they grow in large numbers but across the UK and in much of the EU they are critically endangered to near extinct and very, very very rare. I've only ever seen B.satanas once anywhere else in 31 years. And so too are their relatives within Rubroboletus, such as R.luridus, R.rhodoxanthus and their allies are also very very rare, and like the Devil's bolete are on the red list as critically endangered, so some careful microscopy work to determine appearance, size, shape of spores, presence or absence of clamp-connections in the cap tissue, the appearance of the basidia as well as macroscopic tests employing chemicals of various kinds, from phenol, to a mixture of potassium iodide, elemental iodine and chloral hydrate, the latter I'd have to make rather than buy as its also a controlled drug, being an antiquated and now little-used sedative-hypnotic with little much to reccomend it. Tastes funky and it repeats on you giving you camphoraceous belches for ages, as well as being toxic in chronic use and also well known for upsetting sensitive stomachs. Despite this its banned for OTC sale, but I can make it, or a close analog of it and test it on various fungi with known sensitivity to Melzer's, either by making chloral hydrate via a photocatalytic chlorination of ethanol, or making a derivative called chlorbutol, or chlorobutanol by first preparing chloroform the haloform reaction from acetone and hypochlorite bleach with base such as potassium hydroxide added, and then after distillation of the chloroform, reaction of some chloroform with more acetone, catalyzed by base to give the target compound, chlorobutanol, 1,1,1-Trichloro-2-methylpropan-2-ol which would be quicker than the photocatalytic route to chloral hydrate but at the same time I'd rather use the original recipe for the original Melzer's reagent especially when testing the spores of a potentially critically endangered species. As well as other reagents such as ferric chloride applied to the tissue, silver nitrate, phenol, KOH (10-15 percent) hydrochloric acid with mashed cap sample on high lignin-paper or wood pulp (Meixner reagent, tests for presence of amatoxins although functions via detection of the indolic funtion present as the central tryptophan residue in the lethal amatoxin cyclopeptides (these are the poisons found in the notorious 'death cap', Amanita phalloides, as well as A.virosa, A.bisporigera and A.exitialis, the death caps and destroying angels, as well as in some Galerina species, some smaller members of the Lepiota genus, a couple of Conocybes and another LBM that like the conocybes and those damnable Galerinas can very closely resemble some kinds of Psilocybin mushroom, especially Galerinas and Psilocybe cyanescens. And unfortunately, the Meixner reagent cannot be used to distinguish one from the other since both the core of the toxic amatoxin peptides, which brutally and slowly, hideously destroy the liver, attack kidneys, heart, fuck with blood electrolyte balance and potentially cause the brain to swell, by inhibiting RNA polymerase type II as well as binding to actin, one of the components of the cytoskeleton of human cells making amatoxins most unpleasant and very effective, if slow, agonizing and cruel mushroom poisons, responsible for at least 80 probably 90% of all fatal wild mushroom poisonings world-wide in regions where fungi producing them exist. The tryptophan residue is responsible for the reaction, unfortunately psilocybin and psilocin, baeocystin etc. are all indoles too, being tryptamine derivatives (tryptamine is the indolethylamine compound that comes from decarboxylation and loss of tryptophan the essential dietary amino acid via loss of CO2. And with the precious Psilocybe cyanescens, a most potent magic mushroom species (so strong indeed that a large pick once 'got' two of us, me and a former [later found to be a total psychotic superbitch from the foullest pit in hell] housemate of mine, we'd gone to macdonalds since she wished to eat there, and I had, on the way back spotted something small and brown and wavy colored with blue tinges to the stem base and cap surface and made an instant on the spot field-ID of P.cyanescens. They were too. All but a single one. A single deadly galerina lurking within the rest, which, owing to my dilligence, in sporeprinting each and every mushroom cap, with the stem sliced off and placed directly beside the cap from which it had been cut from, and waiting, doing this for two packed-full to bursting 'happy meal' boxes we'd begged from the manager of the mac-Ds for the purpose of transporting our harvest of what I'd just recognized, and late at night having no other way than without the boxes to have taken my shirt off in the rain and tied it into a bag.
Anyway, we started cleaning them of plant debris and bits of soil etc. And this time I KNOW she wasn't lying, since I was sat perhaps two feet from her directly opposite her, whilst we each tended to half the pile, one by one cleaning and slicing and placing on the trays to spore print. After about an hour or a bit less, of cleaning these mucky little pups, and having to do the spore print to exclude dangerous lookalikes (one single Galerina is a lot smaller than a death cap Amanita or destroying angel, of which a single bite is enough to kill an adult, so doesn't contain enough amatoxins to kill the unfortunate eater of such a venomous little wolf in sheep's clothing, but it would still make somebody very ill and do some potentially permanent liver damage)
We each noticed we were feeling kind of..light weighted, floaty and prone to bursting out in laughter. Then we each looked at each other's pupils and found our eyes like dinnerplates. The P.cyanescens (aka wavy caps) were moist, from it being a damp evening and enough psilocybin and psilocin had to have been absorbed from the prolonged skin contact between our hands and the damp mushroooms' juices, what with them being carefully picked and wipe clean of dirt and wood-chip bits to have delivered what ended up being a fairly active dose, without ever so much as one mushroom being eaten, until my analyses were done, and the one monstrous little impostor, a Galerina autumnalis, a small, brown mushroom that looks unassuming, grows on dead wood, like Psilocybe cyanescens, and can look a LOT like either it, or an edible called Kuhneromyces mutabilis, the latter so closely that it is better by far to simply label the latter deadly poisonous and not even think about eating it simply because its too likely to end up with the wrong mushroom being eaten and the people eating it dying horribly and slowly over a week to two weeks in some of the grimmest ways thinkable. Thankfully in the case of P.cyanescens though the Psilocybes have a violet-black spore print whilst Galerina and Conocybe have rust-brown to cigar-brown spores and a microscope is not needed to distinguish the two (although I have one, and a very good one at that, not cheap, but a professional-grade piece of kit intended for cytology/cell pathology labs and forensics.) and a simple color check is enough to instantly distinguish the two apart if one knows of the difference. And, of course, having brought myself up on hunting down and munching on wild mushrooms as gourmet treats that are free for all, unless in restaurants where one pays top whack for them, like the chanterelle, or porcini mushrooms, both of which are obscenely pricy when sold, but both of which, one bag of dried sliced porcini aside, or even once a truly whopping great harvest of the truly delicious, and rare, very special mushroom indeed, the morel, Morchella elata, one of the black morels in that case that came springing out of a batch of wood chip mulch my mom put down on the garden years back at our last home. The end of the year...there were so many it was difficult to even eat them, most had to be dried and preserved, and anyone thats had morels will testify they are one of the most delicious foods you can eat, if you are lucky enough to find them in a gourmet restaurant and be able to pay for them, or luckier still and find but a few. Let alone have them turn up free in woodchip mulch as an infestation-level of gluttonous indulgence for weeks. If I'd had a means to sell them at that age, the amount I picked from the garden alone, never mind where they escaped too into the local area for a year or so (and sadly vanished after) then I could have made a couple of thousand at least, to say nothing of culturing spawn and growing more. Has to be one of my very finest hours in all my lifetime-worth of mushroom-foraging, that, the monster crop of uber-potent Psilocybe cyanescens, a couple of pounds of them dried, of which 1 gram would hit you enough to know it, and 2 would do so HARD, and 3 or more...there are few words for what that does to somebody. At least few that could be pronounced by human language or heard by living ear. Just a few of those things would kick your ass if not respected properly.
And to date my other finest moment is walking through a certain forest and finding it FULL of Lactarius deliciosus, the saffron milk-cap, which is uncommon to rare, although frequent enough for it not to be irresponsible to pick and eat them, simply locally not common at all, sadly. Absolutely packed, finding bunches of them springing up every foot or two, way more than could be eaten by two men (me and my old man who had come out with me and after being shown them, and instructed in what to look for and what to pick, employed by myself to assist in harvesting those I had not the means to carry alone. Shopping bags full, at the end), many of them we froze for later eating, although roasting plenty of them under the grill or on a spike over the gas flame.
Those, the saffron milkys, they have been prized since roman times and are thought to be the first ever mushroom to be depicted in a mosaic or other similar art painting specifically. Valuable then, and much sought for, and probably hunted down avidly by anybody in the know since people first started to recognize what they could eat and what was particularly good. And they are. They really are delish, alright fried but best IMO roasted, spiked on the end of a fork or knife up the stem and held over a gas burner or even just on the spot, stabbed with a penknife or on a sharpened twig and roasted right then and there, and damned well good enough that its worth, once finding a place for them, getting there by just beginnings of first light and hunting them by torchlight if needs be to make sure you get some before everybody else who knows what they have found spreads the word and down come the hungry hordes with their field-guides, cameras, hand-lenses and for the most advanced and avid mycophiles, the occasional chemical reagent test kit. And of course the ubiquitous note-books and pen/pencils for keeping your personal records of where and when to hunt what.
But..should my suspicions about those boletes be correct or it even be in the same family, despite them being no good for food whatsoever, this will be one hell of a discovery (and it being near one of my mushroom-foraging walks anyway will compensate me doubtlessly with at least some fly agarics and brown birch Lecciniums, L.scabrum, or if I am luckier, Boletus edulis, the cep/porcini/penny bun, which I found there last year and enjoyed mightily once dark had fallen too much for me to walk down by the canal bank and not risk falling in, let alone SEEING anything fungoid, so I'll very likely return with both something to eat, then samples once identified as best I can with my microscope, my books, the net and my chemical arsenal of reagents aplenty then I will be contacting kew gardens about this, in order to establish conservation efforts as are done for ex. for really rare endangered orchids.
And likely as not, having spotted them in plentiful number, also the very poisonous, but in culture with mutagenesis applied and much strain sellection and breeding to obtain a suitable strain to produce proper quantities to harvest, lysergic acid derivatives, ergots, Claviceps species, the one I find is C.purpurea in my patch for ergot, its parasitic on grasses, taking over the seed-heads and making them develop into a bloated resting structure, purplish black in color and banana shaped, up to an inch long and whilst its one of the most difficult, demanding and long term investments of time money, research and energy as well as much repetition of growing, mutating, cloning etc. of mycology projects, since they are some REALLY finnicky fungi. it IS possible to culture it in fermentation tanks/bioreactors, of course needing to be custom built by the biotechnician/s responsible for the overseer position of the project. Involved, difficult but possible to produce several grams per liter even of ergot alkaloids capableof being used for (after some equally demanding purification techniques, chromatography and investing in something like a spectrophotometer working in the IR or UV/VIS ranges then some even more demanding chemistry eventually the lysergic acid amide type or 6-norlysergic acid amide derivative ergoloid psychedelics can be born. That, would be a true badge of pride in scientific achievement to take it all the way from a wild-type ergot sclerotia through the mutagenesis and selection steps, potentially thousands of cultures and cross-cultures and medium experimentation or more, before you get something with the potential for actual culture use for production. A single gram would be...well one hell of an achievement. And something I could truly take pride in forever.
