Shroom hunting Spore Printing for Identification Purposes

[bman1]

Take a spore print only way to know

How To Make A Spore Print From A Freshly Harvested Cap

Once you have a mature mushroom, you are in a position to make a spore print and use it to continue cultivation of mushrooms. The cap should be harvested when the mushroom cap has become flat or is starting to invert.

Sterility is key. Adaptation-25 Be careful not to do anything that will compromise the sterility of your spore print. The typical procedure is to cut the stalk off of a mature mushroom very close to the cap. A sterilized knife or razor blade is used to do this.

The cap is then laid on a sterile piece of tissue paper or card stock and a small glass set over it. The glass is needed for two reasons. First, it keeps the spore print insulated from airborne contaminates. Secondly, it helps keep the humidity high so the mushroom cap can continue to live and drop its spores.

One note of caution. Some humidity usually needs to be allowed to escape. You want the environment inside the glass to be slightly less humid than the environment in which the mushroom was grown.

If you have problems getting a cap to drop its spores, try using a piece of paper for the print that fits entirely inside the glass and spreading out a wash cloth flat on the table. Let the edge of the glass seal to the wash cloth instead of the paper. This will usually allow enough humidity to escape to cause the cap to drop spores.

If everything goes well, after a day or two the cap will drop its spores. Adaptation-26 There will be a purple-brown dust underneath the cap.


Spore Print

Eye glass lens paper is a good source of sterile tissue paper. A box of waxy tissue paper that deli's use to pick up donuts and rolls is another excellent source of sterile tissue paper.

Card stock (such as a recipe card) is a bit easier to use later when you want to prepare a spore syringe, but you have to expend the extra effort up front to sterilize it. To use card stock, place in a 425 degree fahrenheit oven for 15 minutes. Let it cool with a glass over it before you place the cap on it.

Once you have a spore print on the paper, remove the glass and cap. Fold the spore print in half and seal the edges so air can not get in. A piece of scotch tape on each side will do nicely. The spores will stay viable for 18 months if they are kept in a cool, dry and dark spot.

If you place a small amount of desiccant in the bottom of a film container and place a cotton ball on top of the desiccant, you have an ideal container to keep the spore print.

The cotton ball will keep the desiccant from touching the spore print. Seal the spore print in the canister and place the canister in your refrigerator until you are ready to use it.

Note that if you want to be self sufficient, it is a good idea to have multiple spore prints and store them separately. You just never know when you are going to be surprised with a massive contamination problem or thermal death.

The safest thing to do is have a couple viable spore prints so it is easier to recover from disaster. A spore print is typically viable for about a year if it is stored in a cool, dark location. As a print ages, germination gets slower and this process becomes more prone to contamination.

One would not need to be as sterile as this to just identify a mushroom this is for growing which needs to be sterile. it can be as easy as puting a cap on white computer paper and place a glass over it for the night and look at the color in the morning.


Liberty Cap
Psilocybe Semilanceata (Fr. ex Secr.) Kum.
Strophariaceae, Agaricales

Description
Slimy, narrowly conical, brown to tan cap with brownish gills and smooth, off-white stalk; in pastures and manured areas.

Cap
3/8" - 1" (1-2.5 cm) wide; sharply conical, often peaked, and not expanding; sticky, smooth; brownish, fading to tan, bruising blue on margin.

Gills
attached, close, broad; grayish, becoming dark brown.

Stalk
2" - 4" (5-10 cm) high, 1/16" (1.5 mm) thick; very thin, whitish.

Veil
partial veil evanescent.

Spores
11-14 X 7-8 microns; elliptical, smooth, with pore at tip. Spore print purple-brown.

Edibility
Hallucinogenic.

Season
Late August-November.

Habitat
Scattered to numerous, in tall grass and grassy hummocks in cow pastures.

Range
Widely distributed; common in Pacific NW.; also reported in Quebec.

Look-alikes
The hallucinogenic P. pelliculosa and P. silvatica grow in wood chips or mulch, and have conical caps.

Comments
This species is one of the most familiar of the Oregon coast.

Images
1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

Taken from http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/pictures/musid1.htm
Edited by: bman1