Berengar

Thanks! Well, I'll never be "all right" with my diagnosis, but I'm better now. Last winter was a tough one, lost my huge Stetsonia, giant psycho0xcusco, several large chilensis and pasacana, one beautiful and fast growing large pach and a dozen other nice specimens, almost pushed me over the edge, but oh well, what can you do...

Hi guys! Long time no post! I haven't been very well for the last two years, many, many of my cacti died, but a lot still survived! Here are just a few of the "unusual" ones I'm proud of. Just about time they all came out of hibernation. Hope you all have/had a wonderful and fertile spring!

That picture doesn't show much except that it's a Panaeolus species. I really can't see how that could be considered 'golden', but oh well... Dan was probably right, it could be P. cyanescens, squeeze it a bit and check for blue bruising. If it bruises it's P. cyanescens, if it doesn't it's antillarum or acuminatus.

Probably Protostropharia semiglobata.

It's far to young to say for sure. It seems to be a Phellinus sp., but could also be a young Fomes sp., or some other polypore.

Great work Spooge! The one with chantarelle-looking gills is amazing!

Remove peroxide from your recipe. If you want to use peroxide, then use it to dip the tissue sample into it for a second before placing it on agar. And try with a different mushroom, maybe the one you used was dead for some reason. Oysters are usually extremely aggressive, it should grow on pure agar, carboard, pasta... It's never a good idea to use peroxide IMO, even though it may seem like it would be be. It usually does more damage to mushroom mycelium than it prevents molds from growing.

This does not look like pleurotus to me at all, yeasts are more likely. Can you please describe your proccess and the conditions the dish is kept in?

That is P. cubensis. The veil is a giveaway.

Hi Karode! Yeah, it's me. Well, I've seen pictures of alleged alutacea that look almost like semilanceata, and then ones that look very similar to subaeruginosa. I think one of those is on MO, and identifyed as alutacea, based on both macroscopic and microscopic characteristics. So I assumed this might be alutacea as well, going on habitat and season, and general appearance. But I agree with you, very interesting whatever it is!

Most likely Psilocybe alutacea.

It most definitely is not. Not even in the same order of plants. It would however mean that cacti are much more adaptable than we thought. I've never tried grafting a cactus to stapelia or vice versa, but I have seen a picture of a Lophophora grafted to one of those leafy grayish succulents, I forget it's name, and growing very successfully. I regret not saving that picture. But if it can grow on that, than it's entirely possible it can grow on stapelia as well.

I believe it's highly unlikely that it contains psychoactive toxins in any significant quantities. They have beautiful orange prints, always worth keeping. Sandwiched between two pieces of transparent plastic would look beautiful.

It's Gymnopilus spectabilis or something very close.

I bought a cheap Chinese head lamp for about $20 or even less, and very high quality protected Panasonic NCR18650B batteries, and have been using it for a long time, no damage, no flickering, just pure brightness. The lamp is just fine, build quality is good, fits fine, the LED turns night into day, but IMHO what is really important are the batteries. These are 3400mah, 3.7 volt batteries with electronic protection circuits, they last a long, long time, can handle 500+ recharge cycles without a problem, and there is no danger of them exploding on your head. And being replaceable, you can buy a few sets of these and will never be caught out of charge. If you have money to burn, you can spend $300+ on a lamp, but otherwise these Chinese ones are just fine. The lamp is similar to this one. There are others with 2-5X T6 LEDs which are just insanely bright, one LED is more than bright enough for my needs. These are the batteries. Samsung and Sanyo are also fine, almost anything besides Ultrafire or whatever that recycled Chinese crap is called.