The Mushroom Harvest

Where and when to harvest ?

Mushrooms are present everywhere and anytime. To find them, we will preferably go to forests, private open places, pastures, fields, meadows. Local information will be provided on protected areas where harvesting is prohibited. Peat bogs and humid places are particularly sensitive places, housing rare species.

Why harvest mushroom ?

Most often to consume them. In this case it is necessary to recognize them well. Do not, like some, pick up everything and take it all to the pharmacist, who will sort it out, or more wisely, will dispose of the entire crop. Harvest only what is necessary for family consumption, leaving in places exemplary old, which will ensure the permanence of the species. One can simply harvest to know, which opens up exciting prospects of outings in search of the unknown mushroom. It will then be necessary to determine precisely, which can not usually be done on the spot, so it is essential to provide a special notebook for harvests, on which will be carefully noted various useful points for this subsequent step.
In any case, the mushrooms being fragile, the settlement will be avoided by placing the crops in a rigid basket, separated from each other, by isolating the specimens annealed in small boxes or aluminum foil for example. But, the determination being long, and the conservation short, it is necessary to be limited in the number of species collected.

How to harvest ?

With maximum care: the fingers can leave traces or make disappear faint signs of ornamentation on foot or hat. The Souterraine parts will be carefully cleared with the help of a knife, in order to identify the existence of bulbs, volves, tapered tip, rhizomorphs or sclerotia, possibly parasitism on a buried organism, fungus or insect.
Some characters are very variable. It will be necessary as much as possible to harvest some individuals at various stages of development, young, blooming, old, allowing to identify friable ornaments, evanescent shades, fleeting odors, varying with age (cortical, agarics for example).
On site, we will note the conditions of the environment, forest species, presence of mosses, litter, buried wood, nature of the rock, limestone or not. If the mushrooms are isolated, in troops of independent feet or tufts, obviously the date of harvest. All this information will be valuable for the rest of the study.
For transport, absolutely proscribe the plastic bag, so convenient, but which crushes and unrecognizable what is entrusted to him. The wide wicker basket is far preferable.

How to identify ?

Mushrooms are extremely variable depending on the conditions of medium more or less dry, bright or hot, which can act on the size, color, and make them unrecognizable. Several harvests may be necessary to become familiar with a species and recognize it in its multiple aspects. The most obvious characters concern the general massive, slender, slender form, the respective shapes of the hat and foot, the color of the various parts, which is very variable, especially depending on the imbibed or not state. The color is darker when the cap is soaked, much paler to white in the dry state, it is hygrophaneity. When a hygrophane cap dries out, the thick flesh in the center is dark, that of the thinner periphery is light, the result is a hat haloed. The result is reversed if the hat soaks, it reacts like a blotter.
The ornamentation of the hat and foot is appreciated with the naked eye, but meix still with the help of a magnifying glass. The cap can then be smooth, velvety, fluffy, scaly, viscous etc. The cuticle, which corresponds to the skin that covers the cap, will be separable or not, this reflects the anatomical structure and the arrangement of the mycelial hyphae at this cuticle. Note also the presence of remains of veils, melbraneux, filamentous, viscous, a volve, a ring, etc.
The hymenophore which is the part of the carpophore on which the hymenium develops, can be smooth, pleated, formed of stings, pores or blades, whose shape and insertion on the foot will be recognized. As it is colored by the presence of spores in mass, it is enough to lay a ripe hat on a sheet of white paper, and to wait a few hours for the spores to be ejected from the hymenium and to have settled, in sufficient quantity, on the paper. These spores are an important character of determination by their shape, their dimensions, their ornamentation, but these indices are accessible only with the help of a microscope.
Finally, we must not neglect the peculiarities of the flesh. Its color first, which can change with air by oxidation, and which can be different in the foot or in the cap, under the coating, which can vary with the age of the individual. It can also exude a colorless or colored liquid. The smell is more or less characteristic, anise, apple, Jerusalem artichoke... One can appreciate are taste (then spitting out the tested fragment): acrid, spicy, bitter, hazelnut, flour...