5 Comments
Oct 10Liked by Modern Discontent

The variety of content you supply is excellent. I had the fortune of discovering C. Brunneum recently and was also amazed at how large these parasols can get—easily salad plate sized. Something I learned recently: if ever you discover fungus gnat larvae in your forages, some people don’t bother removing them,

and even prefer to cook them with their mushrooms since they add something crunchy and bacon-esque. The world is a marvel.

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Thank you for the kind words!

I never know if these types of posts will interest readers. I usually write these posts because I happened to stumble across something that piqued my interest and wanted to look into it more. I find that I get older that there's a lot of interesting oddities all around us and we may not even bother to notice them, so I hope that these posts inspire people to take a look around themselves and become curious about even the most little things because sometimes things that are insignificant can come with a rich history and background.

It was pretty crazy to see how big these things can get- dinner plates are definitely an appropriate comparison. Some people walking by me and my coworker even commented about the size of the green spore parasols. They seemed to have disappeared overnight with no evidence of their existence, so I wonder if they were either mowed or plucked out. If the latter I hope no one ate those mushrooms...

That gnat larvae things sounds...interesting to say the least. I guess it comes with the territory that foraging may not always result in bug-free bounties. I wonder if someone just got tired of checking for those things, ate them, and just enjoyed the crunch. Not sure if I'd partake, but to each his/her own right?

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Oct 10Liked by Modern Discontent

It finally rained here, after a long dry spell, so we saw all 3 types of fairy rings this week. I sorta think of them as the pasture or yard version of tinea corporis (a.k.a. ringworm).

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The same seemed to happen in my area, so I guess that sort of weather pattern may be conducive to their appearance. I've seen sporadic mushrooms pop up before but never in a manner that formed fairy rings (at least as far as I can recall) so it was pretty wild to see them all over the place!

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Those shrooms wait for the rain. My best bonus this year was a big load of oyster mushrooms. Hoping for one more flush of those before it gets cold.

I wonder if the dry spells wipe out the oldest mycelium and that favors the ring appearance.

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