Some mushrooms are symbiotic with trees, and only grow with certain particular ones. For another, the mushroom may have a fragile volva or universal veil fragments around the base, and these may be lost if you're not careful in collecting it.Īnother important features is the mushroom's habitat: is it growing on the ground, on wood, or something else? If it is growing on the ground, it is often important to note what trees are growing nearby. It is essential to dig the mushroom up carefully if you don't know what it is.įor one thing, the mushroom may have a rooting base, or rhizomorphs, and you won't see these if you just break it off. The base of the stalk turns out to have all sorts of useful features for identification. Image of Megacollybia platyphylla from Jean Louis Émile Boudier (1904 - 1909) Icones mycologicae ou iconographie des champignons de France, principalement Discomycètes In this case, a Ganoderma applanatum has deposited its brown spores all over the vicinity. Sometimes the mushroom will help you out by depositing enough of its spores on its surroundings (or on the lower mushrooms in a cluster of them) that you can tell the spore color right away - the mushroom has made a natural spore print for you. The color of this pattern is the spore color of the mushroom. After a while, unless your mushroom is too far gone, enough spores will be deposited on the paper (or aluminum foil) to make a pattern that looks like the hymenophore of the mushroom. Sometimes (especially if the cap is small) it helps to put a cup or bowl over the cap, so that stray air currents don't blow the spores away. Leave the cap there for a few hours, or overnight. It sometimes helps things along if you paint the cap with a drop or two of water. The classic way to find out a mushroom's spore color is to take a spore print: place the mushroom's cap on a piece of paper or aluminum foil with the gills or pores facing downwards. Photo of Ganoderma applanatum by John Denk If your mushroom is not 'mushroom-shaped' (for example, a coral fungus, morel, or polypore), identification is more dependent on the shape of the fruiting body and microscopic features. If you have a 'mushroom-shaped' mushroom, your first step in identifying it is to determine its spore color. So if you really need to have names stuck on everything you find, mushrooming may be a frustrating pastime on the other hand, if you like finding scientifically unknown things, and maybe helping to figure out what they are, then mushrooming is the pastime for you! In fact, there are large groups of fairly common mushrooms in the United States where most of the species are still undescribed. Mushrooms are not like birds or wildflowers, where everything you see was described and named some time ago.

Identification of mushrooms can be very difficult. Important features to look for when attempting to identify a mushroom.

Psilocybe spore print identification