Oct
16
I have books. I have books about birds, plants, and animals. I have books about the solar system, the deep sea, art books, cook books and a zillion “how to” type books. There’s even poetry in my collection, it’s a reference library – no fiction.
I’ve always wanted a mushroom book. One of those fancy, full colour, photographic, information loaded page turners. The kind of book that provides all sorts of identifiers and double-checks so the distinguishing features of any mushroom I could potentially encounter in the wild would be burned into my brain so thouroughly, that if I plucked and sautéed one of those goodies I’d never get sick. But quite frankly, I don’t trust myself. If I had a mushroom book I’d be out there in the woods every autumn gathering and referencing. I’d be buttering up a pan and selecting just the right type of garlic or cream to accompany my harvest (maybe a swish of sherry for good measure). This would be an error. Even people who are expert in identifying mushrooms get it wrong sometimes. I cannot be trusted with this kind of information so I don’t buy the book. I am, however, fascinated with them.
Mushrooms have mycelium. This is the root structure that extends from the base into the host material. For educated and serious mushroom pickers it is imperative they never destroy this mycelium because maintaining its connection to the host ensures growth the following year. Of course mushrooms are never picked in Woodhaven. In fact there are provincial guidelines that determine allowable and restricted areas for cultivation. Here is the provincial website that’ll tell you where and when – if you care to do this sort of thing. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/rsi/publicuse/MushroomPicking.htm
So with that all said I don’t have a clue what any of these mushrooms are. I do know that the one pictured first is big. There are a mass of them at the edge of my garden and when I first saw them it was an Alice in Wonderland experience. The biggest one in the group was over ten inches across and others in the cluster were nearing that size.
There are mushrooms and fungus popping up all over the place at Woodhaven right now. Here are a few more images of what I’ve found. If anyone can identify them and knows if they’re edible or not please don’t tell me about it. My insatiable curiosity will drive me to try them and that could be an error that I may not recover from.
Sunday, October 24, 1:30 ~ Join us for the opening of the Fall Projects in Woodhaven. There will be performance, photography, collaborative drawings, sculpture, little packets of blessing and more………
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My goodness! Mushroom cornucopia