Question of getting rid of old culms (Wood Chipper?)

[sporkandbeans]

Shrooms! Shrooms! Shrooms!

Seriously!

My wife and I enjoy picking mushrooms from our yard to add to our compost pile. There are times when you can find a mushroom in every square foot of grass. We were so proud of our last haul, i took some pics. That's a 5-gallon bucket we filled in about 30 minutes

[Jeff: Igor's Apprentice]

Wow! What a diverse haul! The Shroom Gods must be smiling upon you.

[Roy]

Shrooms! Shrooms! Shrooms!

Seriously!

My wife and I enjoy picking mushrooms from our yard to add to our compost pile. There are times when you can find a mushroom in every square foot of grass. We were so proud of our last haul, i took some pics. That's a 5-gallon bucket we filled in about 30 minutes

Are these mushrooms going into/onto a bamboo culm compost pile or in your stomach via your mouth?

[sporkandbeans]

Are these mushrooms going into/onto a bamboo culm compost pile or in your stomach via your mouth?

I enjoy eating fabulous fungi, but i'm not confident in my musroom identification abilities. Our homegrown shrooms go straight to our compost bins along with the pounds of coffee grounds.

[Jeff: Igor's Apprentice]

So, I'm a bit shocked by the diversity. Do you often carry specimens home for identification that are maybe getting loose?

Paul Stamets says in Mycelium Running that

In fact, everyone is a mushroom grower, from Manhattan high-rise dwellers to Pacific Northwest loggers, whether they want to be or not. We are all Johnny Appleseeds, or rather Johnny Mushroom spores, in the service of the fungal kingdom.

Still, it seems you have A LOT. Stamets guesstimates that on average we carry 10-100 million mushroom spores on our person each day.

Yeah, definitely want to be sure about what you are eating. Think I might have saw deadly Amanitas in your bucket.

So, do you ever see the mycelium colonizing your compost heap?

[Markj]

Is there anyway of trying to id these easily, anyone rec a good id book.

It's one thing to stick the wrong label on a bamboo, but to eat the wrong.....

[Jeff: Igor's Apprentice]

Mark, I don't think there is a way to do it "easily".
I suspect it can't even be done reliably without assistance from the initiated. Like joining a regional mushroom club and attending their forrays (basically picking a bunch of mushrooms and then having an expert guide you towards an identification). I have the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms and so far I haven't id'd anything from it. Maybe I'm not using it well, but I'm pretty sure its not the book for you (North American guide).

It WOULD suck to eat the wrong mushroom. However, I have heard that in most cultures children of 7 and 8 have foraged for them to put food on the table. You just have to be familiar with the particular types of edibles that grow in an area during a particular season, what their precise habitat and plant associations are, and how to distinguish them reliably from certain "look alikes". My guide tells you what the lookalikes are and how to distinguish them. To do the distinguishing, sometimes you have to learn a variety of things about different mushroom features that most of us "fungiphobes" have never given any thought to. Often, a spore print is required for certainty. Taking a spore print just means putting a mushroom cap on a piece of paper until it drops a mass of spores and then determining the color of the mass. Just because kids of 7 and 8 can do it shouldn't be taken to mean that it a hazardless process. There is a lot to be said for growing up in a place and inheriting the knowledge of the land from one's nature savvy ancestors.

People have been foraging and documenting mushrooms in the UK much longer than here, so at least you have that.

About the only mushroom I would know if I saw it is the Amanita muscaria- the big red and white toadstool of Christmas card and Alice and Wonderland fame, etc. And that one will either make you very sick or very high, depending on who you read or talk to and maybe also how you prepare it.

[Jeff: Igor's Apprentice]

Cool time lapse video of Amanita muscaria:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s_fpRUqpuE

There are other even more dramatic mushroom time lapse videos to be found at that site.

[Joseph Clemens]

There are many good mushroom identification books with color photographs. Very few mushrooms are actually deadly. Those that are, most often, are quite distinctive. A very few poisonous ones look similar to edible species. I've collected and eaten many different edible species using the guidance in such a book, for several decades without a single mishap. I simply avoid any that might be mistaken for a toxic species. I'm sure that I've missed out on eating some fine varieties, but if their is a poisonous species that can be mistaken for a delectable one, then I'm gonna miss eating that delectable one.