The Urban Pantheist

The last few weekends I've been visiting my dad out in the Western part of New England. This past weekend we walked in the rain at the Fannie Stebbins Wildlife Reserve in Longmeadow Massachusetts.
( Read more... )

All-white gilled mushrooms coming directly from dead wood? Oyster mushroom, you have to say. But not exactly--this one gets associated with the oyster group because of its similarities, but has some important differences. This mushroom with its all-white almost translucent flesh always feeds on dead conifers. (True oyster mushrooms will grow on almost anything--I grew some on my junk mail.)


These beauties are more accurately called "angel wings" Pleurocybella porrigens. Like the oyster mushroom, these have been collected as food for ages--plus they are easy to identify and hard to confuse with much else. Unfortunately, it turns out they are toxic, containing a cytotoxic fatty acid. There have been fatalities, mostly of elderly people in Japan who happened to also have pre-existing kidney problems.

Younger people with healthy kidneys may be able to eat moderate amounts of angel wings without health problems--but modern field guides play it safe, listing this formerly "edible" species as "poisonous."

"Pleuro-" means side, and "porrigens" means extending forward, both refer to the way the mushroom emerges straight out from the side of its substrate. The -cybella part is a bit of mystery. The spelling is close to Cybele, an ancient mother/nature goddess, but the pronunciation suggested puts it closer to "sibella," a Greek word meaning "prophetess."

Here's one of our new zookeeper interns taking Widget the screech owl out for a spin!


And some nice oyster mushroom gills, why not?

The oyster mushrooms have rotten away, and a sentry has moved in below the birdbath. Probably he came to eat the bugs and slugs that ate the mushrooms.

April 24


April 28

This is my first attempt at cultivating mushrooms, in this case "Pearl" oysters: Pleurotus ostreatus, purchased from Fungi Perfecti. The kit is a big lump of sawdust inoculated with fungal mycelium. Once it arrives, the cultivator just has to water it and keep it covered with the humidity bag (a plastic bag with some holes in it. I also mixed in a few big handfuls of shredded junk mail and newspaper. I'm working on a more elaborate, perhaps artistic project involving growing mushrooms on junk mail, and this is my first test of the system.

It lived in my basement from the time it arrived on Valentines Day (I waited a couple weeks to mix it and put it in its bucket, so it wasn't exposed to New England air until almost March) until mid-march sometime, when it stopped getting so damn cold every night. This species is not harmed by the cold or by freezing, I just didn't want to work outside more than I needed. I brought the 5 gallon bucket outside and hung it up, and tried to remember to water it 3 times a day, but often only managed to get to it daily. On March 15, the first visible primordia--the gathering together of tissue that will become fruiting bodies--appeared.

Over the following weeks there appeared three mushrooms, two out of the holes on the shady side of the bucket (it hangs near a high retaining wall), and one from the bottom hole. Another appeared on top of the exposed junk mail/saw dust matrix a few days later. The one pictured above was the biggest. I wanted to wait as long as possible, so that it would be an impressive item to display at my upcoming mushroom class (May 22). Then I worried it would get eaten by fungus gnats, so I planned instead to cut it and make beef stroganoff or something with it as an ingredient. Unfortunately, I didn't act quickly enough, and all the mushrooms have a crispy burnt looking edge to them now.

Growing these mushrooms was really fun, and I hope this group keeps fruiting for a while. If the activity dies down I can try to mix in more junk mail, and if it doesn't work the whole mess will go on the compost heap (or the brush pile...?)and still contribute to the yard.

If you want to know about this species in the wild, it was 365 urban species #289. Oyster mushrooms of various species have appeared often in this blog, as the group has many attributes that suit it to flourishing in a northern city. Also you could read an entry about the species by a real mycologist, Tom Volk.

Oyster mushrooms growing on a large mulberry tree in The Riverway.

Late Fall Oysters are the urban mushroom of the moment. A quick google search shows at least three different scientific names in current use for this species (or complex of species). It's grayish, fleshy and gilled, growing directly off of dead wood, in the fall after the first frost. Here it is in its natural habitat, a dog pee-soaked stump in the sidewalk at a cab stand by the trolley station at Brookline Village.

Winter conditions (let's be honest) make us look harder for the beauty and life. We stumbled upon a whole row of witch hazels that we had no idea were there. Since these are blooming in the fall, there's a good chance they are the native plant American Witch-hazel Hamamelis virginiana. (Putting that Sibley book to use right away.)

( Read more... )

This isn't at all what I pictured Portland would look like.  Alexis and I flew into Portland, got a rental car and a hotel room, and checked the internet for something interesting to see.  I actually went to yelp.com and typed in "interesting" and "portland."  The first hit was a city park called Tanner Springs Park.  We typed the intersection into the gps and went to go find it.  Strangely, we couldn't find it anywhere.  We parked the car and went walking around what turns out to be called the Pearl District.  Down by the river we found this horse barn.


( And then we found some other stuff )

Photos by urbpan. Location: Olmsted Park, Boston.

Urban species 289: Oyster Mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus

The oyster mushroom is named for its resemblance to a seashell, growing from dead wood (for discussion of this topic, see the entry on turkey tail). Like most mycological topics, the identity of the oyster mushroom(s) is a topic for argument. Some authorities designate all bracket mushrooms (those that attach to wood horizontally with no stalk) that are whitish to grayish to brown as Pleurotus ostreatus. Others save P. ostreatus for the gray capped ones, assigning white capped Pleurotus the species names dryinus or cornucopiae. All agree that a bracket mushroom of these colors, with gils on its spore bearing surface instead of pores, is delicious. Oyster mushrooms are much sought after, even included in the "safe six" in Start Mushrooming and other beginners' foraging guides. Oysters can be cultivated, and many supermarkets include them alongside portobellos (Agaricus bisporus) and shiitakes (Lentinula edodes). Oyster mushrooms are produced by wood decay fungi, which perform the vital service of turning dead wood back in to soil. Along with humans, certain beetle species enjoy eating oyster mushrooms, and these insects are often hiding in the gills of collected specimens.



( Read more... )