View the spoiler for my guess at what I think it might be, but please first come to your own conclusion before looking at mine — I don’t want to bias your guess.
My guess
Psilocybe cyanescens
They were found in mid-november in the Salish Coast region of Cascadia. They were growing out of woodchips composed of a mixture of western hemlock (majority), and western red cedar.
Side view of one full mature specimen:
A group with a sample of the substrate (the cap appears to be umbonate):
A closeup side view, and internal view of the stem (it appears to be hollow):
Cross section of the gills — they appear to be adnate, or sub-decurrent:
Underside of view of the gills:
Spore print (first on white background (the split is due to two halves), second on a black background):
Examples specimens once dried:
Examples of the colony, and the location/substrate in which it was growing:
Cross-posts:
Would you by chance have a guess as to what they might actually be?
it’s what we call in the field call “LBMs”, little brown mushrooms 😆 It’s not worth trying to ID to species, and often isn’t easy to do. There are certain mushrooms I don’t try that for, LBMs and Russulas are often the kinds of mushrooms I don’t bother with.
My suggestion is to find a local mycology group where you can join them on forays and learn how to ID mushrooms.
Is a forum specifically about mushrooms (ie this one) not sufficient to this end? 😜
absolutely not, lol
How come? I would think that an online forum has a much larger potential surface area for accessing collective knowledge.
I could understand it seems that way when you don’t have any experience with identifying mushrooms, but there are so many reasons to meet in person and go on forays with people more experienced than you. When you follow taxonomic keys it’s not uncommon that you need to evaluate mushrooms based on their taste (bitterness, piquancy, etc.), their smell, and other qualities that are impossible or difficult to describe objectively or photograph.
As others have pointed out, mushrooms are heavily local and the internet will have people who will easily misidentify a species because it looks just like something they are familiar with in a different region (this is the cause of many deaths, east Asian immigrants coming to the U.S. misidentify deadly poisonous mushrooms as a common edible from back home when they come here).
Furthermore, internet forums are not well suited to the kind of pedagogy and learning that getting experience with mushroom identification requires. You need continued experience watching others identify mushrooms successfully and to learn over the course of their identifications how to identify mushrooms yourself. There is a kind of learning from exposure that happens that way which isn’t replicated easily on a forum.
I sort of half agree with this. I think the important component that’s fundamental to what you are decribing is experience. Simply reading about mycology isn’t sufficient; one must also practice identifying what they find, and they must get constant feedback on whether the identifications are correct, and if they aren’t, one must learn why. Where we differ, I think, is that I think that one can do this via forums, it just might be less efficient. One must also be resistant to misinformation, and one must take a scientific approach to how the information is presented rather than purely a teacher/student approach.
I certainly agree that this is a risk. I think, at least, a big chunk of it could be alleviated by people citing how they know the information that they are providing — eg if someone asks about a mushroom in Cascadia, then someone says they know what it is and then cites their source as knowledge gained in China, it should then raise some red flags, or at least raise the bar significantly for trust.
right, but it’s the internet - you’re just going to get people asserting or agreeing or upvoting without any evidentiality, and trying to pry evidentiality from people will come across as tedious or potentially rude. Maybe in some circles it would be totally fine (like academics), but with the general mushrooming public I suspect you just won’t get a culture like that.
I see your point, and I generally agree, but I think it’s more of a separate issue. I think people should still be pushed to cite sources for their claims.
For clarity, are you saying that there are qualities that can only be taught by first having someone that can already identify the mushroom to then point out the quality that you must memorize for future comparison? Or is it simply a failure of proper communication — ie maybe it is possible to describe these qualities and one is perhaps lacking the sufficient descriptive skills?
I’m saying some mushrooms cannot be identified from photographs, you have to be able to smell, taste, touch, or otherwise interact with the mushroom in person (one mushroom I know of requires hearing!). This is a death-blow to the idea that you can just identify mushrooms from pictures on the internet. Of course some mushrooms cannot even be identified with all of those things, you have to take a spore print and then view the spores under a powerful microscope and be able to measure the spores. Even then some mushrooms cannot be identified to species without a DNA analysis.
Out of curiosity, where would one look for the database of DNA sequences of things like mushrooms to compare, if one was able to sequence the DNA of a sample that they wish to identify?
Very interesting! Which mushroom is that?
For clarity, when I said “describe these qualities” I wasn’t meaning only using photographs. There could be many means of describing the qualities of an object. For example, when you said
There is something that is being sensed that can be documented and/or described — after all we are sensing the quality ourselves. One could try describing textures and tastes, or, perhaps, for greater specificity, a chemical smell or taste signature could be recorded and documented for reference.
I’m obviously not saying that these are things one should be expected to learn or do in the wild for any practical foraging purpose, nor am I saying that it’s an efficient means of learning things, but I think that it is possible to accurately document and describe traits to successfully identity a mushroom without requiring an in-person course. But, of course, it also comes down to knowing what to look for, and where to look.
I think that I would agree that it is at least very efficient means of acquiring mycological information. For example, I went on a day course for morel foraging once, and I definitely learned a lot from that in a much shorter timespan than I likely would’ve by simply reading and asking questions on forums.
yes, absolutely - but it’s not just more efficient, it’s necessary
I’m not denying forums can be useful, they should just be a side thing, in addition to in-person forays
Mushroom species have different geographic ranges and it’s hard to identify species from a photo unless you’ve seen it in real life so global groups tend to be less useful than local groups.
Also the accessibility of the fediverise as a platform is an issue. The best place to go for PNW mushroom identification is a Facebook group as much as I hate to say it.
I know I directly mentioned this community, but I was more inferring generally about internet forums. When referring to this one specifically, it would be with the hope of it becoming large enough to have sufficient numbers of people with the expertise necessary to answer mycological questions.
I share that hope, I’ve been trying to post to [email protected] pretty regularly.
I completely forgot about that community! Perhaps I’ll cross-post this there as well.
Interesting point! Though I don’t entirely see why Facebook would need to be the community of choice instead of another. Why not hypothetically establish a local instance of Lemmy for the same end? Or were you more talking about facebook’s already established size, so it’s less work?
It’s already established and a lot of highly knowledgeable local mycologists already hang out there and have no interest in switching to another platform.
Just gotta make Lemmy more enticing 😜
Out of curiosity, what methods would be used to definitively identify these sorts of mushroom that make it not easy?
in the case of Russulas for example you would essentially need a strong enough microscope to inspect and measure spores, and even then it might not be enough and you would have to sequence the DNA to identify to species. Russulas also have specie-complexes so looking too closely results in having to shuffle and re-define the taxonomy.
When there’s so little functional difference between the species, groups become more useful for identification.
I don’t blame you if you don’t want to chew on raw Russula long enough to tell whether or not it’s eventually spicy though.
In addition to the reasons for given for Russula in the other comment: LBMs tend to be deadly poisonous and aren’t that interesting to look at so nobody cares about figuring out which one is which except professional researchers.
Russula at least have colorful caps, choice-edible species, and are fun to huck at trees.
Interestingly specific comment 😆
They have a stiff chalky texture that’s easy to recognize if you know it but throwing them at a tree to see if they shatter like a snowball is a great way for beginners to confirm that they’ve found a Russula.
That’s such a unique and interesting method of identifying a mushroom!