/myc/ - mycology
Let's identify mushrooms. Hopefully occasionally gonna post this stuff.
Mushrooms have several traits to identify them.
First the appearance. They consist of:
- cap
- hymenium is the underside of the cap where sores grow, can be gills, sponge, internal (eg. puffballs), etc.
- stalk (or stipe)
- annulus is a collar around the stipe, remains of a partial veil
- volva is like a boot or a sock at the base of the stipe, remains of a universal veil
The aforementioned veils are membranes which cover the gills (partial) or the whole mushroom (universal) at younger age.
There are other physical characteristics:
- spore color
- smell
- taste (well obviously don't eat what you couldn't identify, but still it's a trait)
- bruising, changing in color when touched, injured
Beside two more important factor that might help:
- habitat
- time of year
From the little XP I got from researching these two >>/38799/ >>/40440/ I know it is useful to remember species with close resemblance to each other, and ask X inedible/poisonous species has Y and Z characteristics, are these present on the one I want to identify?
Here's a publication that list similar pairs. It's in Hungarian, but next to the picture it gives the name in Latin, so perhaps could prove useful even for foreigner. The association which compiled this little pdf has a great online database of mushrooms with good description and great photos. However for the identification process it isn't convenient to use, so first other sources needed, then when the possibilities are narrowed down, only then it's useful for confirmation.