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Ellezdey
Stranger
Registered: 02/08/07
Posts: 67
Last seen: 12 years, 8 months
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PLZ helpme identify my Coloradoan Mushies!!!
#6955327 - 05/23/07 05:57 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Its mid-may in colorado and spring is changing to summer. I was walking home around 6 pm and i am taking a path thats twenty feet from the road. The path are concrete square blocks layed over a field of wood chips. There are small flags pointing out of the ground saying "sanitary water pipes below." It had rained a bit the past couple of days and this day and the day before were pretty warm. I found up to twenty mushrooms growing out of the wood chips ranging in size from 1/3 cm to 2.5 cm and from bulbous/conical shaped to flat/fringed shaped caps. They grew in an area between an aspen tree (i believe) and confier bushes (the path, where the mushrooms are, is between the aspens and the bushes). They immediately appeared to me as magic mushrooms but i knew i would read up first. I picked most of them and went home.
Since then i have been looking up all sorts of information online and have come up with several conclusions. They look like cubensis or cyanescens but some sites say colorado has no psilocybe species known, just pluteus, conocybe, panaeolus and gymnopilus. There are risks with the cyanescens look-alikes that im aware of and most sites say blue bruising should occur with most psychoactive mushies. Mine, have yet to bruise, but i only picked them yesterday. It appears as though i have two species in my collected batch tho. One species (looks the most like cubensis or cyanescens) has caps that are stereotypical psilocybe color but have fringed edges and cracks that look like half-popped popcorn kernels. The other species has softer, shinier and less orange caps though appearing to still be fringed (i dont know if fringing is expected at a certain age or with a certain species). But this type has more conical shaped caps and less flat shaped caps.
After a days worth of drying, the difference gets much more noticable. At picking, i thought they were the same (except for two very small/thin stemmed mushrooms that were completely light-dark brown)
The gills of both types are brown with a tint of orange thats only visible at certain angles. The cubensis/cyanescens look-alikes have longer, sharper gills and the other has narrow/flat gills. The portion of the gills closer to the stem on both types are slightly white. It appears as though the young ones of both types have broken through the veil and i have yet to find a mushroom in my batch that hasnt opened.
The stams are white and are mostly bent, some straight. The cubensis/cyanescens look-alike has stems that appear as though layers have folded/shriveled up towards the stem and are ridgid with no shine and are from 3 mm to 3/5 cm thick. The other type has less imperfection (as far as folded/shrivelled upward layers) and appears to have a shine. These are thinner, about 2 mm to 2/5 cm thick. Both stems are white with a tannish/orange/yellow staining towards the bottom.
After taking off a very small chunk of the caps from both types, i chewed on them individually to get a taste. They both tasted mildly like market mushrooms and mildly like cubensis mushrooms. Neither of them smell very strong but the cubensis/cyanescens look-alikes have a stronger shroomy odor. i spat it all mout so no worries, yet.
If someone can help me identify these for safe eating, i will be grateful and somewhat surprised. If i didnt give enough information for my readers to accurately guess the species types, please ask me the proper questions accordingly. I did not pick all of the mushrooms and when i walked by again earlier today, i definitely saw more mushrooms poking up through the wood chips and today has been very rainy. Tomorrow is supposed to warm up with less moisture and its supposed to get warmer and drier after that. I think ill have to go back soon....
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spores
haploid
Registered: 02/18/99
Posts: 2,486
Loc: Washington
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Re: PLZ helpme identify my Coloradoan Mushies!!! [Re: Ellezdey]
#6955759 - 05/23/07 08:45 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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cubensis and cyanescens look nothing alike . cyanescens grows in the fall and cubes grow from cow shit, neither are found in CO to my knowledge, your mushrooms are not likely to be either.
you should learn to take spore prints, consult the FAQ or your favorite search engine to learn how... spore color is probably the most helpful piece of information for identifying little brown mushrooms.
but if I had to guess, I'd wager you probably picked some Agrocybe praecox...
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xmush
Professor ofDoom
Registered: 10/22/05
Posts: 2,421
Loc: Jaw-juh
Last seen: 14 years, 5 months
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Re: PLZ helpme identify my Coloradoan Mushies!!! [Re: Ellezdey]
#6955938 - 05/23/07 09:36 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Wow, you obviously put a lot of thought into this post, but you didn't put a lot of thought into your mushroom ID. Wehn you were reading descriptions of Psilocybe cubensis, did you see the part about it growing only in sub-tropical to tropical climates, and that it grows in bovine dung? Actually, my post is redundant because spores said all there is to say.
Good luck. Make sure you get a spore print and maybe we can narrow things down.
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ToxicMan
Bite me, it's fun!
Registered: 06/28/02
Posts: 6,725
Loc: Aurora, Colorado
Last seen: 10 hours, 58 minutes
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Re: PLZ helpme identify my Coloradoan Mushies!!! [Re: Ellezdey]
#6959795 - 05/24/07 12:34 AM (16 years, 10 months ago) |
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Being from Colorado myself, I can tell you confidently that we don't have either P. cubensis or P. cyanescens. Looking for those species is a waste of your time here - it's just too dry. In general you can pretty much give up trying to find an active mushrooms here, unless you're looking in somebody's closet. The few we have are not species I'd recommend a beginner attempt to identify, and none of them are common.
As a crude guess, I'd go with something close to Agrocybe praecox, which has been coming up in wood chip mulch beds for the last couple of weeks. They often have a yellowish color to them. Another possibility is an Agaricus species, the genus of mushrooms the common store white button mushroom is from.
A good general tip is that any mushrooms you want identified you need to pick some specimens of. Try to get specimens covering the entire range of ages if possible (sometimes features are only visible on old or young specimens).
Happy mushrooming!
-------------------- Happy mushrooming!
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