45 replies to this topic

[BuckarooBanzai]

Okay, so my FOAF came home to find this odd looking fellow:

(click a picture to see the larger image)








I kind of like him. He flesh is dense and "old" looking. The deep creases in the cap look like wrinkles and the hardened quality of the usually warm golden cap coloration is interesting. The stipe almost looks like it has a beard, with all the peeled back flappy areas.

According to my friend, this guy is growing out of a pint jar about 1/3 full of popcorn/castings/verm, cased top and bottom with plain verm, innoculated with clone water. 1/4inch of coconut fiber on top (my friend likes chewing bits of coconut fiber a LOT more than chewing verm flakes). The jar was throughly drenched with water and placed in an experimental terrarium 9 days ago. My friend was away while this fruit developed, so he can't say if these qualities were present from pin. There is only one (huge) fruit, so he can't say what this jar might do with other bodies. He also can't really say how the terrarium conditions might have fluctuated recently, though it seems nice for a case now (%85-%90 rH).

Not having watched these very different results develop from a clone source has my friend VERY FRUSTRATED. He is strongly considering a change in his line of work to be closer to his experiments. He is VERY mad that he put the experimental jar in the experimental terrarium. Two huge unknowns and no observation record! Bad amateur scientist! POOR METHOD!!!

So, for those of you who have seen a few of these things, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK...

Is this fruit showing evidence of too much water in the casing or too little? Is this too much humidity in the terrarium or too little? Do you think the stem grew that way or "folded" from the weight of the cap (plenty of space around/above it)?

Is it odd that there is no bluing around all those cracks and exposed internal flesh? Is this an indication of lessened potency?

My friend is intrigued by this shroom. He has been staring at it for quite a while now. It's weird looking, but it's real freakin' big (look at that last pic, when this sucker opens fully, it's going to be about the size of the wide mouth pint it's growing from).

Should these results be persued or is this an "error?" My friend craves your input, Mycotopians!!!

DAMN I LOVE MYCOLOGY.

[BuckarooBanzai]

My friend thought some gill shots might help identify the weirdness and he discovered that this fellow has just pretty recently torn his veil and has some excellent photographic potential.

Here are two shots of torn veil, still barely holding on to the stipe.





I love the way the veil looks. It reminds me of Giger's biomechanical transitions. Gelatinous and flesh like, especially as it tears.

In these next three, you can see spores darkening the gills inside and at the edges, but not yet completely covering the gill structures. Maturity is almost here!







There doesn't appear to be any structural oddness to the gills/underside, though. No creases or strange coloration to speak of.

[Dank Side Of The Shroom]

wtf. no idea but it sure looks kewl.

[MurCurY]

what strain is that supposed to be?

[BuckarooBanzai]

My friend says that these are Hillbilly's. My friend has been told that they are one generation away from wild. My friend has seen some markedly different physical features from cake to cake when grown from spores. He says there is even a decent amount of variety when using cloned tissue. According to Hillbilly, this is to be expected and is also his experience.

According to my friend, this is cloned from a fruit that was bioassayed and judged extra primo good. It was, in fact, a really big fruit that was assayed by two seperate people, both of whom offered a hearty thumbs up. It is definitely a cubie.

So, Dial8, you are thinking dry air? My friend thought dry conditions, because the flesh has a shriveled/dessicated look. Also, it is very hard/dense to the touch. But the stipe has all those brown striations, which my friend thought was associated with too much moisture. Maybe it's substrate is wet, but the air is dry?

If this is scaling, would that be from air that was continuously a little dry (bad terrarium design) or one long blast of really dry air (good terrarium, bad gardner left lid off)?

[anticheffy]

Growth was slowed for some reason (humidity low, or temp problems) at some point in the lil guys life, that allowed the skin of the cap to dry and toughen up. Then growth took off again and caused the skin to split like that.

[Hippie3]

looks to me like it suffered alternating periods of dry then wet

[spacecowboy]

...this type of growth is highly sought after by Shiitake growers.

Background information:

Mushroom Growers Handbook 2, p84 (p12 of PDF)

[BuckarooBanzai]

Hua-gu. Interesting. That is what it looks like...

Post autopsy update:

External tissues were VERY dry to the touch and had almost a styrofoam consistency. The stem looks and feels partially dessicated. It is "crisp" when bent, breaking pretty cleanly. Internal tissues are VERY dense and "styrofoam" like. Very little color/consistency variance in the stem. No hollow center, totally solid all the way through.

The undersides of the stem where it bent were gnarled and knotted, almost like weeping willow bark.

There was almost no bluing noted during or after the autopsy. What little coloring appeared is almost greenish and very faint. The gills are very dark with spores and are the only seemingly normal feature of the fruit body.

This is an interesting mushie and I'm letting the jar continue (in isolation) but I don't think I'll be bioassaying this fruit. Your thoughts?

[spacecowboy]

Possibly Verticillium.
RR

I don't think so...

http://mushgrowinfo....ertsymptoms.htm

...seems more like an environmental cause then a pest or disease.

[slp]

I have observed this condition in the wild. Only during the winter months. We have always referred to them as "Crackly Tops". They dry really hard, almost like a piece of hard sugar. They appear to have much more dense biomass, and do not cumble up easy like others do after dried. And yes, they were prized as being very potent. There fruiting always occured during colder temperatures. It was from these very same "Crackly Tops" I come up with our "Polar" version of Ps. cubensis, some 25 years ago. Maybe I missed it, but I did not see where any temps were given. Did they get cold? I believe that if the strain is able to fruit in cold temps, the slower growth allows for much more biomass in the same area. Meaning, they might just be more potent because you are eating up to twice the normal amount shroom for shroom. But if weighed out, you will see just one Crackly Top weighs as much as two same sized normal shrooms. slp/fmrc

[BuckarooBanzai]

FMRC, your comments intrigue. I was away during the fruit's development and it was in a totally experimental environment (I really wasn't expecting anything from that jar).

Additional study oand examination of the environment over the last three days has shown some very interesting things.

As it turns out, the closet the tub was sitting in is on a patched hole in the floorboard. It is basically sitting with one layer of plywood between it and the crawl space. There is no temperature control in the tub. Temperatures in this tub are, as a result, highly variable. I got a night time low of 58F and a daytime high of 71F. Average temps are in the 65-68F range.

Since the tub is humidified only by Perlite evaporation, RH varys over a pretty wide range as well. Low RH measured was %72 and hight was %86.

What really blew me away about FMRC's comment was that they "they dry really hard, almost like a piece of hard sugar." The dried pieces of this cap are totally different from all it's clone brothers. It's almost like Marzipan! The cap was still very heavy when dried. 16g.

As a responsible scientist, I believe I, shall have to assay this fruit personally.

FMRC - thanks for your input!

[BuckarooBanzai]

Okay, this is definitely a "problem" I need to try and reproduce.

Careful weighing and bioassay of this fruit was quite suprising. It is markedly more potent than it's clone siblings. I'm not talking 3 or 4 times as potent, but it is noticably stronger. Some placebo effect can certainly be credited here, because greater potency was hoped for/expected.

Placebo doesn't explain my partner assayists opinion, though. She was given no information about a possibility for increased potency. Her opinions matched mine, though. Gram for gram, this "Crackly Top" is stronger than the other fruits she has sampled.

Also, the flesh has a much milder taste, even dried and powdered. I wish I had sampled a tad, just for taste, when it was still fresh.

We are doubting any heavy "bad" bacterial load, because no additional stomach or GI upset was noticed. If either of us begins to turn yellow or glow, we shall certainly report it!

So, not only is the flesh extra weighty it seems to have extra psilly as well. After that cap was fully dried, it was hard as a rock. It took significantly longer for the coffee grinder to powder it. I swear, it was like a marzipan mushroom.

Going back over his notes, my FOAF realized that this jar is one of the tests of Stevia leaf he had basically forgotten about during his road trip. That may have something to do with the potency bump as well.

Your comments are greatly appreciated.

[spacecowboy]

Formation from low humidity and cold tempeature with flutuation in temperature and humidity.

During the formation of shiitake basidiocarps (fruiting bodies), under winter or winter-like conditions, when young buttons reach 2-3cm in diameter, dry air and cold temperatures force pilial (cap) surface into dormancy. In such an adverse environment with drastic diurnal fluctuations of both temperature and humidity, a protective dry surface is formed on the young mushroom cap. Nonetheless, the inner portion continues to grow using water avalible from the substrate. When favorable growth conditions return, the surface grows at a retarded rate, while the inner portion grows at a normal pace. Under these conditions, shiitake mushroom buttons grow with alteration in dormacy and growth, and a considerable differential in the growth rate between the surface and inner portion. In time, the rapid growth of the inner portion raptures the mushroom surface, producing a flower-like cracking pattern on the cap surface. The name, hua-gu means flower (hua) mushroom (gu) in Chinnese.

[BuckarooBanzai]

And the winner is: Hua-gu brought on by a drop in humidity/temp shortly after the pin is about an inch to inch and a half tall.

Here is some "induced" hua-gu on only part of the fruit in a case. Humidity/temp was dropped for 12 hours about 48 hours after the first pin showed up. The larger fruit and smaller fruit weren't affected, but the ones that were right in that "just about to go big" stage showed the phenomena:

http://mycotopia.net...10&d=1138042346
http://mycotopia.net...11&d=1138042346

Here is a shot of the whole case, you can see the smaller and larger bodies that were unaffected.

http://mycotopia.net...09&d=1138042076
http://mycotopia.net...12&d=1138042346

Pretty interesting phenomena. I believe it shall prove useful to know how to do this when the Shitake man comes a calling...