Erotic Are Mushrooms Legal In Canada Uses

• Posted by nupep shrooms March 15, 2022 Filed in Health #are mushrooms legal in canada  66 views
  click to rate

  I have a love-hate relationship with russulas, the eye-catching, colourfully-capped mycorrhizal mushroom types known commonly as brittlegills. I love it when you chance upon a pristine specimen that has been unmunched upon by insects, slugs or squirrels. It seems impossible to resist the temptation to get down to ground level and take a snap. I hate the subsequent task of attempting to home in on an identification so you can put a label to the resulting photo.

   

  Identifying russulas is a painstaking process: determining which of the nearby tree species’ roots in a mixed woodlands it might be forming a mycorrhizal relationship with; in which range of hues does the highly variable cap colour fall within; sniffing to detect if are mushrooms legal in canada there’s any hint of an aroma such as coconut or crab or strewed apples that goes beyond the simple description of “mushroomy”.

   

  The nibble-and-spit test to gauge whether its taste is peppery, acrid or bitter, or any of the other vague categories in between; the thorough examination of physical features such as gill spacing, stem width and how far the cap cuticle peels towards the centre; the rubbing with Guaiac and iron salts to see what colour the flesh changes... And this is before we even get to the microscope stage.

   

  Yes, it takes many years in the field to get one’s head around the 200 or so species of brittlegills that have been recorded across the British Isles. Nevertheless, there is one that is not only almost conspicuous within this genus by its utter drabness, but the remnants of its fruitbody, once it has fulfilled its spore-distributing process, leave one in little doubt as to what it is.

   

  

   

  That is the Blackening Brittlegill (Russula nigricans), whose fruiting bodies are quite a bit larger than your average russula, getting up to around 20cm across as they expand and flatten out. They start out a grimy off-white colour before darkening through an ever-darkening range of slightly greenish greys and browns before eventually turning completely black.

   

  Unlike most fungi fruitbodies, these blackened caps don’t just turn to mush and rot back into the ground. They dry up so as to appear mummified, and you can find their black husk-like remnants lying around for months after the main fruiting season, often well into the following year.

   

  The Blackening Brittlegill might seem pretty unique then, except that the mycological world is never thatsimple and the world of russulas even less so. In fact, there are a number of other species that blacken and desiccate in much the same way. The Fungi of Temperate Europe are mushrooms legal in canada refers to them collectively under the category of ‘charred russulas’, and lists Russula adusta, Russula densifolia, Russula albonigra and Russula anthracina.

   

  The British Mycological Society  for some of these: R. anthracina is the Coal Brittlegill, in obvious reference to its colour, while R. adusta is the Winecork Brittlegill, as it reputedly smells of empty wine barrels. R. densifolia is the Crowded Brittlegill, due to its tightly packed gills – something which distinguishes it from the Blackening Brittlegill, which has unusually widely spaced ones. When it comes to the taste test, R. acrifolia has hot peppery gills, earning it the memorable title of the Hotlips Brittlegill.

   

  Other features distinguishing these various species include the way the inner flesh colour transforms from their original white when a fresh mushroom is cut in half: R. adusta, R. densifolia and R. nigricans for example turn red then black, while R. anthracina goes straight to brownish black.

   

  But let us not get waylaid by any of this, because the main reason for covering these charred russulas this month is due to the way that these or carbonised cap remnants serve as mini ecosystems in their own right as they persist beyond the initial fruiting stage. Look closely and you’ll see them crawling with near microscopic bugs and larvae, and beyond the scope of the naked eye, they swarm with bacteria and other microfungi.

   

   This is the case for many decaying fungal fruitbody, it is true, but the charred russulas also provide the substrate for two more conspicuous species of fungi – the Silky Piggyback and the Powdery Piggyback.