October 2017 Mushroom Walk

Three boys ready to take mushroom hunting very seriously! 

Today, dear reader, we are looking for poisonous and edible mushrooms... 

We set off into the woods, armed with sandwiches.. 

Errr boys, come back.... 

We found the ubiquitous Fly Agaric - both hallucinogenic in small doses and deadly in larger doses. There really is no mistaking a fly agaric, since it is the only toadstool which is red with white spots, it also has white gills and a white stem and comes from an egg shaped sac which is similar to the death cap... you can see the white ring around the stem from the egg bursting open. Amanita family = white gills - lots of poisonous varieties. 

We found edible boletes. This is actually a less edible version of the boletus family. Identifiable by spores not gills and some of them turn blue when you depress the flesh. 

Spiny puffballs... edible but nah, there isn't a war on and that's probably the only circumstances I would want to eat them in! Unidentified, brown-gilled shroom, very pretty. 

I think this one is a panther cap - or similar. 

The next is actually edible but no thanks! 

Tolly (Caden's best friend) conquered Mount Tea! (No Idea!) 

Spiny puffball again.

We did identify this one but I can't remember it. This particular one was petrified and so big that we named it Mushroom-zilla! It's there all the time!

They boys and the puppies found a cave! 

Jan bought me a fantastic mushroom knife... which I keep forgetting to take with me. I am getting slightly better at rememebering now. The brush is to dust off the shroom and the blade so that you dont rip the roots from the ground. Good shrooming practise apparently. We all have a lot to learn. 

Pretty bells! 

Ceps.... nom nom

And Caden discovered this one ... the Death Cap... I hadn't ever identified one before and now we know where a load of them grow, they are beautiful but it's quite awesome to look at them and know that you cannot touch them and that they are deadly poison! The kids are really good on the basics of the deadly and the edlies... 

These are the edlies... Boletes (but not really tasty ones) and shaggy ink cap (Christine Milne, like a Rushmere ;) ) We ate some of the shaggy ink caps and we let one turn into ink and did some writing with it, from a hen's feather! It worked brilliantly! 

Caden with his ink caps

My tasty Cep... yes I ate it... I let Jan have one slice... ;)