2012/11/28
Mushrooms of Atlanta!
I spent the week in Atlanta for Thanksgiving seeing my parents, brother, and friends. It was a mixture of work, play, and exploration. Here are some of the highlights:
My Dad id a mycologist by training, and has recently joined a mushroom hunting club, which has inspired several trips with just our family to seek out fungus in the Atlanta Area. We explored Piedmont park, a local Decatur park, and Chatahoochee nature preserve up by 400. We found:
Ahhh... another mushroom who's name I can't remember but it was also a tea mushroom. It was somewhat funny to think that we found mostly one mushroom in each spot, but that's because we were late in the season.
As we were hiking, we also identified trees, apparently mushrooms grow on, well just about everything, but the editable ones are more likely (in the us) to grow on hardwoods. Pines have componements that end up being highly toxic to humans, and mushrooms growing on them are to be avoided.
My dad and Conor were reading a book called Myciliam Running, that gave all kinds of references to mushroom characteristics and uses. Apparently there are mushroom that absorb radioactive materials, fungus' that act as helper cells for trees, and components of mushrooms that can hold 1,000,000 times the weight of their own mass.
There was lots of talk about mushrooms this weekend, if you can tell.
Here's a leaf that I couldn't identify, so I need to look it up, while we were on our trail.
... sorry no pictures of Mushrooms!
My Dad id a mycologist by training, and has recently joined a mushroom hunting club, which has inspired several trips with just our family to seek out fungus in the Atlanta Area. We explored Piedmont park, a local Decatur park, and Chatahoochee nature preserve up by 400. We found:
- 5 or 6 Richie Mushrooms in Piedmont, used for making herbal teas and seem to be the centre Chinese medicine. They seem to grow on dead or old oak trees, and have a generally dark complexion. It seems most people make Tea or syrups with them, they're not enjoyable to eat.
- A lions mane in Chatahoochee preserve, which we put on sandwiches after boiling. It was a loner, and the area had seemingly been picked through.
Ahhh... another mushroom who's name I can't remember but it was also a tea mushroom. It was somewhat funny to think that we found mostly one mushroom in each spot, but that's because we were late in the season.
As we were hiking, we also identified trees, apparently mushrooms grow on, well just about everything, but the editable ones are more likely (in the us) to grow on hardwoods. Pines have componements that end up being highly toxic to humans, and mushrooms growing on them are to be avoided.
My dad and Conor were reading a book called Myciliam Running, that gave all kinds of references to mushroom characteristics and uses. Apparently there are mushroom that absorb radioactive materials, fungus' that act as helper cells for trees, and components of mushrooms that can hold 1,000,000 times the weight of their own mass.
There was lots of talk about mushrooms this weekend, if you can tell.
Here's a leaf that I couldn't identify, so I need to look it up, while we were on our trail.
