Shroom hunting Mushroom Hunting Questions and Answers

[D.U.M.B]

Hello,
A mate and I went out today to check some local fields for shrooms. We usually get them from the same place every year but we wanted to see if we could get some more close to home. Anyway we found a few but we continued walking to the woods and we came to this clear where we seen white shrooms, sprouting that looked like magic mushrooms. We aren't sure but I could have sworn that I heard about magic mushrooms that you find in woods, is this true. Could be way off but we were just thinking are they white because of no sun (well sheltered)


Even if these don't match a description can somebody please tell me weither you find shrooms in woods and if there appearance or anythinng is changed.


BTW. Liberty Caps are what we find here in ireland.


Thanks

[OneDiaDem]

Mushrooms need very little sun, and are really not veryaffected by the sun as far as color. All light does for the most of, is make them grow vertically. There are plenty of poisonous white mushrooms btw.

[synexic]

Pick of a few of them. Look at their gils, look to see if they turn a blue-ish color when picked, look to see if their stems are hollow.

[OneDiaDem]

Not all stems are hollow.

[limpet chicken]

There are a couple of species that do grow in wooded areas, I am, of course from the UK, so please understand I am not too familiar with American, and other species that would be foreign to me.

Psilocybe cyanescens (wavy caps) are very potent, containing sometimes up to 2% psilocybin, and a large amount of psilocin, also containing an unusually high concentration of baeocystin and norbaeocystin, highly potent and visual fungi.

Unless you grow these youself, or buy them from a responsible shop, or are an experienced collector, forget this species entirely.

They grow on wood, an inch, or a couple of inches high with a brown and wavy cap, bluing can be extensive due to extensive oxidation of the abundant tryptamines within.

The reason I reccomend to forget this species if you are not very experienced, is that there are lookalike fungi, especially of the genus Galerina, there are some members of the Galerina family, that look almost exactly like P.cyanescens, these contain heat-stable amatoxins of similar kinds to the ones found in the lethal Amanita phalloides mushroom or death cap albeit at a slightly lower concentration than the above.

Amatoxins as I said, are heat stable, composed of polypeptides, they exert their toxicity by inhibiting RNA transcriptase in the liver, preventing the synthesis of DNA from RNA, this causes severe hepatic toxicity, often renal failure, massive vomiting and diarrhea and agonising gastrointestinal pain. Oedema of the brain can also result in severe cases.

The toxins are not excreted, and instead are recycled through the liver which gets progressively more damaged each cycle, treatment of amatoxin poisoning has an extremely high mortality rate, I have heard as much as 90% morbidity.

The symptoms of ingestion of amatoxin containing fungi have a characteristic delay before onset, from 8 to 15 hours usually, making it a particularly insidious and unpleasant toxin, as by then damage done is often very severe.

After this delay, gastrointestinal symptoms are the first to shot, severe vomiting, diarrhea and cramping pains, all the while hepatic damage is occuring. Often this subsides temporarily, leading to discharge from hospital assuming recovery.

The victim of poisoning will then relapse shortly after with the same symptoms, and die.

Treatment of amatoxin poisoning involves haemodialysis and filtering the toxins out of the blood, high dose intravenous administration of silybinin (milk thistle extract) and transplantation of a donor liver as the original liver is often reduced to a waxy and necrotic festering mass, close monitoring of blood chemistry and electrolyte balance is also needed, survivors will need to stay on immunosuppressant drugs such as cyclosporin for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection of the donor liver.

In short, a very painful and unpleasant way to die

(Genuses [sp?] known to contain amatoxins are, Amanita, Galerina, Lepiota, and possibly Hpholoma Fasiculare (sulfur tuft))

As for other psilocybes found in woodland, I believe psilocybe Crobulus (crobula??) is also found, its a small brown woodlover, quite nondestinct, I believe it is an active species.

I believe I have also found P.argentipes locally to me although ingestion was not attempted, it is light brown capped, brown gilled, and a characteristic lighter color in the cap center. Active species.

Blast it, no edit function Ican see, sorry, I just remembered to say, if it isn't a liberty cap, and looks whitish, in the UK/Ireland then I VERY much doubt is is psychoactive, and I am what I would consider a very experienced amateur mycologist.

There are some lethally toxic small white fungi, Clitocybe Rivulosa, and C.dealbata both are small and white, they contain fatal concentrations of the toxin muscarine. C.dealbata and C.rivulosa both grow in open areas.

I forgot to mention, other tryptamine containing fungi growing in woodland include Gymnopilus species (big laughing gym), a single species of Mycena, and two or three species of Inocybe.

Do not attempt to harvest the Inocybe species unless an experienced mycologist eqquipped with identification guides and a high quality microscope, as members of this family are almost all toxic, some fatally so, nondescript, and often indistinguishable without the aid of examination of tissue and spores under a microscope.

The primary toxin in Inocybe species is muscarine, one in particular, I.Patouilliardii (red stainer) is known to have caused multiple fatalities.

OneDiaDem pointed out to me in a PM that my post was a little unclear.

I apologise, I was very fatigued when I made that post, and not at my usual eloquent best

I did not mean that psilocybe cyanescens was toxic, or indeed related to toxic species.

I was trying to say, that some fungi containing amatoxins, the deadly galerinas, can look very similar to P.cyanescens, and sometimes even grow right among the clump of psilos, just a very few galerinas eaten can prove fatal.

[smiley]

When are they in season?

they also say you have to pick them at midnight. Is this true?

[Alfa]

You do not need to pick them at midnight, at daytime would be much easier. Fall would be the best time to find them, but they do get up during the spring as well.

[aMorphius]

When I lived in north Florida, the seasons were fall and spring especially
after a hard rain (1-2 days after). Mostly in cow pastures in or near piles
of cow manure. Pick the mushrooms that look like the breasts of young
girls and that turn blue where you touch them (also they have no collar on
the stim). Good luck!

[Phungushead]

I'm assuming you're talking about P. cubensis... in general, the prime
picking season is May-October, but depending on how far south you
are, they can be found year-round.

Picking at midnight probably only applies if you were going to pick
mushrooms from some stranger's field and were afraid of getting
busted for trespassing (which doesn't sound like a problem in this
case, and is not recommended anyway).

A lot of people give the advice to go at midnight because if there is
enough moonlight, the light-colored shrooms will stand out from the
dark-colored ground.

24-72 hours after rainfall is a good time to go look.

Factor/effect things (by GGreatOne):
Temperature = Potency
Humidity = Quantity
Weather = Condition
Field = Quality

[Djvr16]

I've heard they are only in Black Angus cows, is this true?

[Phungushead]

Originally Posted by Djvr16

I've heard they are only in Black Angus cows, is this true?

As far as the mushrooms are concerned:

Black angus poo = any other cow poo = nutrients

[Lacognac69]

when i was down in south florida i tried to find shrooms on a cow farm. Unforunatley we were unable to find any. It had rained heavilya day or two before and the temperature was fairly warm and humid. We found lots of cow shit but no mushrooms growing on them. I'm curious what the problem could have been, this was just a couple weeks ago also. The people that i talked to do there said we just didn't look good enough or something. I would have expected to find something though, but we didnt find anything even close to a mushroom.

[sterling77]

The field
probably wasn't inoculated yet. Many fields are fruiful, but
other times a pasture hasn't been introduced to the spores yet.
Some of my older friends used to go to a field that didn't have any
caps popping up and take a spore syringe and inoculate as many patties
of shit as they could.

[Canabis]

OK, who can write all shrooms species, whith can make drugs

[Phungushead]

Originally Posted by Canabis

OK, who can write all shrooms species, whith can make drugs

There are too many psilocybin-containing mushrooms to put them in a
post (see below)... if you want to go out and pick them yourself,
what you will find is highly dependent on your location (as well as
other factors listed above), check out this:
http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10684
then do a little research so you can be damn sure you know you're
picking the right mushrooms... it would suck to die from eating the
wrong species and all.

If you still want to see all the active shroom species, here ya go
(there are 186 ):
A List of the Known Psilocybin Mushrooms

[GETERDN]

I am interested in learning differences between the way mushrooms grow in the wild Compared to how they grow when cultivated at home ,mostly P. Cubensis .

1. I was always told best to go picking mushrooms the day they after a hard rain , but doesn't the growth cycle take up to 1 month ?

2. how long should one wait to return to a field after already picking mushrooms there ?

3. what are some of the factors that make one field produce more mushrooms then another field and why do some cow pasture produce little or no mushrooms ?

4. what are the maximum and minimum temperatures to not grow outdoors ?

5. Is there an easy way to collect spores from wild mushrooms with low contamination ?

[Phungushead]

1. Well, here's how the growth cycle works for wild mushrooms...
a. The cows are out there eating
grass... they are also eating millions of spores along with the grass.
b. The grass (and spores) enter the
cows digestive system. Cows don't have stomach acid, so the
spores aren't hurt. While the grass is being digested, the spores
are hydrating.
c. The cow basically shits out an already innoculated cow pie.
d. Mycelium starts to grow... now this
takes awhile, and it happens while it is relatively dry out (too water
will drown the mycelium). During this time, the cow pie is
decomposing.
e. The mycelium is ready to produce
shrooms, but it needs high humidity, so it'll just sit dormant until it
rains, which gives the moisture needed to fruit.
f. So yeah, the best time to go shroom picking is 24-72 hours after a good rain.

2. When you pick the shrooms, don't just yank out the whole thing - cut
it off, leaving about 1/2 inch or so of the stem still there... that
way you won't hurt the mycelium, and it can produce more shrooms
later. A pile of cow poo can produce many flushes of
mushrooms. So give it enough time to produce another flush (at
least a week, and after it rains). Of course, getting greedy and
overpicking the field can cause shroom extinction. Rotating
fields works really well too.

3. Older fields will generally produce more mushrooms - over time, all
the dirt in a cow field will basically be poo-enriched soil, and there
are already mycelium networks established. A new field may have
not been innoculated with spores yet, or the mycelium just hasn't
established (takes 6-8 weeks usually). And some fields may just
be really popular with other pickers.

4. I've heard that cubensis will grow between 45-85°F... thermal death
is somewhere around 104°F. It's best to go when it's in the 70's
though.

5. Take a sterile cotton swab, stick it up in the gills of the mushroom
(spores will stick to the cotton), stick the whole thing into a sterile
culture tube and seal it.

[Water]

I"ve only went hunting once, and only came up wiht some inactives. But
if there is cow cakes some where do they always have shrooms?

[Phungushead]

Some fields are better than others due to:

1. Location... cubensis are the shroom that most people are looking for
when they go out hunting, and they don't grow everywhere - you can
get them in Florida and parts of other southern states.

2. Environmental conditions... if they're not growing, it could be
because of many reasons:
a. Too hot
b. Too dry
c. There's some other competing orgranism in the soil/shit.
d. Extreme wetness (drowns mycelium)

3. The field is just new, and/or hasn't been innoculated with spores
yet. Also, contrary to popular belief, you won't find shrooms on fresh
shit... the mycelium has to develop before shrooms can be produced,
which will usually take longer than a month, and by that time the shit
has decomposed and blends into the surrounding dirt - basically making
poo-enriched soil.

4. Someone else knows about the field and is gettting there before
you.

[happatai]

I live in an area close to farming and such, lots of cattle ranches...
In this case, can shrooms grow from dung any time of the year? It isnt
raining anymore, but there is plenty of cow poop and tall wet grass.



Also... are there any poisonous mushrooms that grow from cow/horse
dung? I was just planning on searching through patties and taking
whatever I find, assuming they're psychedelic. Thanks.

[120mg]

You definately need to know what you eat!

[Phungushead]

Partially depends on the temperature and your location... for example,
you can find shrooms year round in Florida if the temperature/weather
is right...

But anyway, definitely do some research first. There are many places
online where you can find what species grow in your area. Pick up a
field guide... it'll tell you their seasons and most important, how to ID
them. Picking and eating random mushrooms is just asking for trouble.

[twizted]

SWIM lives in a somewhat farmer/country community with plenty of cow
pasture available to him.. SWIM was just wondering what were the ideal
times to go pick mushrooms from the cow poop (prefferably at night!).

And the shrooms are under the cow shit? This is what i've heard just want to be sure.

Also, how does SWIM distinguish between magic shrooms and the shitty ones?

Also, I know Donkeys shit in one spot constantly, and SWIM has a friend
with a Donkey. Would the shrooms grow on the donkey shit?

Thanks




Edited by: twizted

[Phungushead]

In order:

Ideal time to pick: a day or two after a good rain... moderate
temperature. Spring and especially fall are best seasons.

Temperature = Potency
Humidity = Quantity
Weather = Condition
Field = Quality (by GGreatOne)

No, you'll see them growing up out of the shit. And keep in mind
that by the time mushrooms form on the shit, the shit will have
deteriorated a lot and sunk into the ground... basically making a lot
of poo-enriched soil. You won't usually find them growing out of fresh
piles.

Search this site/Internet (lots of info on that), or buy a field
guide. A lot of it depends on your geographic location as well...
find out which shrooms grow in your area, and do a lot of research.

You'll mainly find them in cow shit... they seem to prefer it over
other shits because: cows have multiple stomachs and no stomach
acids... cows eat a ton of mushrooms spores while they are eating
grass, and as there is no stomach acid, they are not killed and can
begin to germinate inside the cow... and then the cow shits out the
whole thing, and you probably get the picture...

[Dellzx]

SWIM lives in Alabama, USA it is all ways really humid and its rains all the time and during the summer the mornings get really hot.
Now my questions are:

Do Magic Mushrooms only grow in cow pies?

If they do grow wild were at in the wild?

How long should i wait after the cow produces pie before i start looking for them?

What if the cow owners feed the cows?

What should the temperature be?

Can SWIM eat them as soon is he picks them?

Is it better if the grass around the pie is high or low?

If SWIM eats the wrong ones what should he do?

And how long does he got before he goes on his last trip?

Is the something SWIM can but in the grass to help the cows to produce them?

Is there something SWIM can put on the cow pies the help them grow?