20 September - We Meet our Study Area and Hunt for Mushrooms

Mushrooms are very cool, or I think they are at any rate. They've been a motif of my entire life, lying around on folk art and in books about fairies. Probably one of the first things I ever wanted to draw well was a mushroom. Even by the name toadstool they are cool. Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet but she ought to have sat on a toadstool. 

The only downside to mushrooms is that a great many of them when picked in the wild and subsequently cooked tend to cause gastric upset, if not death. My mother, being from Poland, has fond memories of mushroom picking in the woods but she told me, and still tells me never do that without someone who knows 100% the poisonous from the not. Here, in Ontario we have a lot of questionable shrooms as well as 3 deadly ones.  If you want to eat a mushroom then buy it in a supermarket. Otherwise, though, enjoy your shrooms because they are beautiful. 

We leaned some things today. Mushrooms aside, we learned that the Copeland Forest is beautiful. I just want to state this right off the bat. We have ourselves a lovely study area. 

Shroom-wise we learned about 3 types: Gilled, Morels and Boletes. 

Gilled mushrooms are the ones we see in the supermarket with the gills under the cap. The spores fall out of the gills and you wont see the gills until the mushroom is ready to drop them. This is your classic toadstool.

Morels also have caps but the caps are long and sponge-like. We did not find any morels on this expedition. Most are edible and most are quite good. Of course, mushrooms being mushrooms, there is a False Morel out there which spells DOOM to the unwary.  

Boletes are shelf mushrooms. These are the ones you'll see lined up along the length of a rotting tree. You'll know the tree is rotting, even if it still has leaves because this is what mushrooms do. They break things down. They are an integral part of the decay cycle.  Boletes are mainly edible but not all that yummy as mushrooms go. If you are stuck in the woods and hungry then this is your safest bet fungus-wise. Boletes donot have gills. They have a dense sponge-like texture on the bottom.

 

This is not a mushroom we found in the Copeland Forest. This mushroom was growing in Bay of Fundy National Park this past August. The picture shows us that slugs eat mushrooms.Slugs are quite keen on mushrooms. Between the mushrooms and the slugs you have very efficient breakdown of organic matter, though it can takes years for mushrooms to spread. 
 
After our look at mushrooms we investigated the pond next to where we were settled and also the culvert that drained the pond. There was still quite a bit of life in the pond and someone found a water boatman. In the spring we will look more closely at the pond. 
 
Back at home we took our forest notes and put them into a journal. Here are two mushroom related  links:
Photos on this page are by Lisa BC and Tracy Ward.


http://www.ont-woodlot-assoc.org/sw_mushrooms_2.html
http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/?p=68