Well that just makes you a freak then odeon. Fucking weirdo
As for me, just come back home after quite a decently lengthy and at best pretty demanding hike (narrow, thorn infested, in places a complete mire passable by performing something akin to tightrope-walking, only on a narrow, steep area at either edge a few inch wide.
Had a bad time at first, as I've a bad leg atm (not just the usual trouble, done something to it somehow and it hurts like hell, difficult to lift from a sitting position, although I managed to get in/out of the car alright by sitting down backwards and levering myself round, picking up my hurt leg with one arm.)
Was definitely very, very glad indeed that I had the foresight to pack along a preloaded IM shot of 150-180mg morphine, and a few caps of oxy, although I only needed I think, three over the time I was out. Me and the old man went to one of his fishing spots, not to fish, this time, but so I could act on the tip-off he gave me that the area was an absolute motherload for wild mushrooms. Every color, size, shape and weird quirk you could imagine, from tiny to large sized bright violet (same species, Laccaria amathystea, the amathyst deceiver, edible, but I've tried them once and I'd re-word that if I wrote the guide to 'won't poison people that eat it', Edible, isn't a word I'd use, tried them last year, some well-developed, fresh, relatively young ones so it wasn't that they had gone off, but fried them up along with a plateful of other, tastier things, like porcini (cep, Boletus edulis, the one they harvest for canned mushroom soups since those preserve their excellent flavour after pretty much anything you care to throw at it in terms of cooking techniques, boiling, steaming, roasting, pressure cooking, drying etc.) but the deceiver portion of the meal was, after one bite, a second of another mushroom to see if it was a specific fault of the fruitbody itself, or inherent to its kind. It was the latter. Awful. To the extent its got the dubious accolade of being one of the top handfull of the absolute foulest, vilest and most stomach-turning wild fungi of any kind I've ever cut up, thrown in a pan and stuck on a plate and down my neck. Or would be if it GOT that far.
Didn't get so far as actually swallowing the grotty little bastard. Spat that out into the bin straight away. Ew. Can't really describe WHY it was so nasty, it was just..well..nasty.
Today found more of those (they do look really nice, and harbor no poison within, but nobody in their right mind would ever eat one twice, if there is an alternative means of avoiding starvation. Looks-wise often a big fat bulbous base to a very thin tapering stem, and a bright, lurid shade of violet throughout every part bar the spore print (white, IIRC)
Plenty bright red Russula species, and attractive R.atropurpurea, at least probably that species, dark vivid purple (brittlegills, related to the milk-caps, Lactarius spp. but unlike them the Russulas don't bleed when cut or broken) plus some potentially enticing looking Lactarius that may well be edible. Some of a cup fungus, tentatively ID'ed in the field as orange peel fungus, which look exactly like just that, bright orange on one side, white and slightly fuzzy outside. Meant to be decent eating but I've never had any before. So assuming this is indeed Aleuria aurantiaca, then that at least will go into a pan and get a quick sizzle in some butter.
Some odd kind of polypore. Thought at first it might be beefsteak fungus, but toughter, and with a white hymenium (sporulating surface), and extremely fine pore diameter. Had to fish that one out more or less on my belly out the clay pit, growing on a branch, by squirming under the fence partially to grab the far end of the branch and reel it in like a fish on a fisherman's hook. (so we did kind of go fishing afterall:P)
And Boletes, boletes EVERYfuckingwhere. Some of them, really quite massive things, still got to do the ID on them since one of the options is edible, the other can mean bloody diarrhea, severe stomach/GI tract pains, vomiting and plenty other nasty little things that generally go alongside such poisonous irritant type fungi. Bright yellow pores, quite fine, big stems, big doesn't really convey it though very well, since they are squat, thick (4-6 inches maybe more) and caps in the case of the biggest of the speciens, about the size of a dinnerplate on its own and a few inch thick. Almost turnip-like in the young ones (but it isn't the devil's bolete, since the pores rapidly become red even in immature specimens, lacked both the reddish reticulate meshwork pattern on the stem and the abominable stench best described as something once living, that crawled into a pit of hospital offal, and then stopped living, turning into a shrivelled, slobbering vaguely once-mammalian skeletal cast wrapped in organic slime, wriggling with really, really desparate maggots with nowhere else to turn, in a pool of stagnant..liquid of some description, mixed with a cut of steak that got forgotten about for long enough in the freezer to turn just the same [I've found this exceedingly rare species a couple of times in my life, maybe 3, 4 if you count a reccurence in the same place one year after the first sighting there, and the smell is indeed so dreadful you cannot keep one out in the open, even a small one, and comfortably/tolerably remain in the same room, after its had sufficient time for the stink to diffuse over to where the nose of the room's occupant might be]
Whatever these are, biggest one probably weighs a pound or two or perhaps more, with an almost thuggish, hulking kind of squat look to it. Although at the same time, attractive to look at, pale caps, yellow stems IIRC. Had to jump a small, but stagnant and nasty, squelchy looking little river-let to get to them. And back again.
Found some milk-caps worthy of identification, may be worth eating, possibly one of the deadly webcaps (Cortinarius spp. some of which pack a slow-acting nephrotoxin [kidney-destroying poison] that may take as long as a month after ingestion, after which time, the damage is long ago done and your either fucked, or you survive if you've eaten only a very little, with poor kidney function or else end up either on dialysis or/and awaiting your turn on the transplant list. Contain something called orellanine, in a handful of the species, fluorescent under certain UV wavelengths, (orellanine that is) and structurally, somewhat related to the very unpleasant, now afaik banned herbicide, paraquat and diquat. Definitely not ones for the table, quite definitely in the family and they have 'that look' to them (wouldn't mean much to somebody unfamiliar with the family and in particular the nastier members of it) But reddish-brown rusty gills, even when young, white cortina (a veil, in the very young specimens-getting both young and old is essential for IDing Corts, and altough a few Cortinarius spp. are edible, most remain unknown as to edibility, and in one subgenus (there are about 10-14 or so sub-genera within this large and very diverse family) at least, there lurk a handful of truly deadly poisonous ones, some of the most poisonous mushrooms around, so definitely going to be IDing those, but they are going neither anywhere near a cooking pot, or to be allowed in the bag with anything possibly destined for one.
Bagged a solitary, lone blusher (Amanita rubescens, poisonous raw, must be boiled at least twice in two fresh changes of water before thorough cooking, or it causes a kind of haemolytic anaemia, potentially leading to kidney damage if the haemolysis be severe due to toxic waste products from the broken down red blood cells. Not sure if I'll eat that one or not. Never had it before. Called blushers, because unlike their poisonous relative, the panthercap, which does not, the blusher has a ruddy tinge to it, and reddens when cut, distinguishes them from the panther cap, Amanita pantherina which contains similar intoxicant/neurotoxin mixtures as the fly agaric along with a pair of other trace-level toxins, present in tiny quantities, but unfortunately, also gobsmackingly potent, active in the low femtomolar concentrations!)
Grabbed some brown Birch Lecceinum. Saw plenty of other things that I didn't take, some presumed Heboloma (possibly 'poison pie') something that might well have been edible but I didn't want to chance the ID, growing in big luxuriant clumps, similar to some species of oyster fungi, although these were not they (sadly, since wild oyster mushrooms are great, surpassing those bought from a shop in flavour with no effort at all. )
Things like sulfur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare, once thought merely bitter, inedible and unpleasant but now known to contain the same amatoxins as the fungi that cause the highest worldwide mortality rate in terms of mushroom poisonings, along with a slew of their own nasty little customers, the fasciculols, going up from A to at least F or G, more IIRC. Not one for the pot, looks alright, sometimes, bright sulfur yellow but with a hint or lurid dark green to the gills especially, and more so than usually when older.
And delightfully, found a few, just a few, grass-heads infected with Claviceps purpurea (rye ergot) with sclerotia poking out. Thats something like the third or fourth site I've found them at, over two or three years, so I've just added to my library of Claviceps genetic material, which is important for all the crossbreeding and splicing experiments I've got planned, I need as much genetic diversity, as many races and strains as I can to start out with for the mutagen program I've in mind to get me the productive strains I so desire. The species, indeed the entire genus is very, very genetically complex and mutates readily. Especially C.purpurea, that one is the least fussy of the entire family. Although not impossible it might be due to species that differ solely at the genetic level.
Still, the more the merrier, although the harder I'll have to work, the more thousands of agar plates/slants I'll have to culture, test, subculture, retest, expose to mutagens etc, and eventually once I come to understand it at a deep practical level, try genetic tinkering with techniques like CRISPR/Cas9 or retroviral vectors with various target genes amplified, knocked down, knocked out etc. In particular there are three main things I want to nail down-editing out scenecence, ascospore-productive heterokaryotic alkaloid producers, and proper stability of the cultures. That, and technologically-wise, proper methods of maintaining the cultures in an inert, living state, for longterm preservation, be it in liquid nitrogen/osmotic protection etc. or lyophilization. Just something that minimizes the rather sensitive little buggers exposure to stress, since that is a major knock on the head when it comes to the cultures coughing up lysergic acid peptide alkaloids for the growers and wouldbe growers. The less they get generally knocked about, mistreated, the more coddled they are physically the better. Although for that, polymerized calcium alginate matrix micronized (ideally, at worst, hoping for a mm or two) loaded with oxygen-transporting perfluorocarbon emulsion, as O2 is critical to formation of the lysergic acid derivatives, and with larger, easier to form polymer beads there ends up, without the assistance of various technological tricks like the perfluorocarbon emulsion, addition of surfectants to increase cellular permeability, essentially an anoxic dead-zone where little grows and what does produces only less valuable products suited only as feedstock for spiking cultures.
Hope you and her royal PR-ness end up alright and don't have either to suck up any filthy weather, or any possibility of her taking fright (@QV)
