I’VE BEEN TAKING WALKS these days, relishing the prolonged fall I do know can’t final, having fun with the press of sole to soil earlier than it will get slippery on the market—earlier than it’s winter. A good-looking stand of mushrooms has been catching my eye the previous few weeks, and me: all the time curious. What are they? Seems they’re some of the recognizable species of all: the shaggy mane, Coprinus comatus, one of many so-called inky caps. It’s the mushroom that simply taught me a brand new phrase:
deliquesce [pronounced deliˈkwes]: to turn out to be liquid, throughout decomposition, or by absorbing moisture from the air.
See the lique in there, like liquor, or liquid? (See the lique within the images above, and under, all drippy from the decomposing caps? The inky black lique?) It’s a type of self-digestion, this autodeliquescence of their gills—and in doing in order that they launch their spores.
Professor and mycologist Tom Volk of the College of Wisconsin-La Crosse wrote this piece about shaggy manes, and their relative ease of identification, and each Volk and the MykoWeb web site, in its cookbook part, say the “ink” was used as simply that in George Washington’s day, amongst different enjoyable truth and lore.
Sure, the shaggy mane is edible, however since I’m no mycologist, I don’t choose wild mushrooms for consuming. For me, the fun of the hunt is within the studying captured as an alternative. , like with the Amanita fairy ring of late?