Berengar

@Zed240 - Your 'Galerina Marginata' looks a lot more like a Hypholoma sp. to me. Not saying for sure becaue the photo isn't very detailed, but it's very likely.

Awesome finds! Ovoids are a very beautiful species, always wanted to introduce them here, but never managed to successfully complete even the first stage. Same goes for that Stropharia. Your invaders are an Agrocybe species, Agrocybe putaminum or something in the praecox complex, they are edible, so you don't have to worry in this case. And those do indeed look like T. versicolor, specimens from last autumn, you can tell them apart from lookalikes by comparing the pore size.

Exactly. And it really looks to me to be the same clone that was sold by BBB as peruvianus. Could be an intermediate form or some kind of hybrid, I doubt they'd be able to sell that much of them if it was 'true' cuzcoensis in every sense. But definitely not what we consider T. peruvianus these days. That seller seems to be a really unsavoury individual, wouldn't want to do bussines with someone like that...

All I can say is, his prices are ridiculous!! And the plants he's selling under T. peruvianus definitely look like T. cuzcoensis, or what was sold as 'T. peruvianus' by BBB and others in the past.

Premature pinning can also be a sign of too nutritious agar mixture.

That's right, a lot of requirements have to be met for the mycorhizzal link to take place. First, the host tree seedling has to be very young. And I mean just germinated. Anything older than a few weeks can be very resistant to mycorhizzal links with higher fungi, and if it's collected from the forrest, the chances are it's already established a link with some mushroom species and will reject the one we want to give it. So that's the main problem, raising a small forrest indoors in sterile conditions. Another very important thing is the pH of soil, which is extremely important to some mycorhizzal species, as well as the presence of some microelements in the soil. I have two very good agar recipes for mycorhizzal fungi, which require a long list of inorganic compounds, salts and whatnot. One other thing you may try is to make a 'tea' of the soil that seems compatible to the species you want to cultivate, and add a bit of nutrients like malt extract.

I'd love to see it! So, terscheckii is slower than pasacana? I always thought they are about the same, if anything that pasacana grows slower. I grafted a couple T. terscheckii onto relatively large pereskiopsis a few weeks ago, I'm now really interested to see if they are as slow as people say. On the other hand, my 3 month old T. chiloensis graft now looks like a golf ball balanced on a toothpick! Seems that most of these larger Trichocereus first grow fat before going columnar.

Wow, that's quite a boost compared to an own-root 2 year old specimen! And people usually say it's not worth grafting them...

Looks wicked, how old is it?

That is extremely unlikely, Agaricus perobscurus is a species with unbeliveably narrow fruiting range (in North America), and very late fruiting season. You shouldn't be so concern to slap an existing label on your find, it could very well be an undescribed species or variant. What's in a name anyway?

No, you're right, as I've said in my previous post, probably all of the muscaria in AUS has been introduced from Europe, and is pure red. But just wanted to mention that it can sometimes be some other colours, and still be considered Amanita muscaria. In Europe there is only one vivid yellow variant, mostly growing in the north-east. I've seen pictures of green A. muscaria, but the ones you find in the woods are unlikely to be photoshopped.

Some variants of the species can have light orange to vivid yellow coloured caps.

EU

I bought several species in dry spawn form from Funghi mara several years ago, tried spawning them directly, G2G, isolating on agar, in all cases the only thing I managed to cultivate was Dactyllium and pink molds. I have never heard of anyone who has successfully grown mushrooms from their dry spawn, no idea how they are still on the market.

Awesome, I wanted to try these for a long time! If you're willing to post outside AUS, I'd be totally in!

A. muscaria never has a gold or green cap, some variations or genetic lines can have orange to yellow cap, but if it's more golden, it is a different species like A. gemmata or A. pantherina. And only deadly Amanita species have green caps. A. muscaria growing in Australia is invasive from Europe, so it should almost always be vivid red. Also, A. muscaria never grows out of an egg, but has a bulbous bottom, if you eat an Amanita with a veil that grows out of an egg, you are very likely to die.

I'm not completely sure, this is a specifically Australian native species. But the related Macrolepiota procera is amazing, distinct flavour difficult to describe, but not overpowering, and they have great consistency. They can be fried in batter, a la Parisienne, cooked in stews, in cream sauce, you can dry them and use as spice etc. I'd assume this species is pretty close.

Macrolepiota dolichaula. It's edible, only caps tough, the stipe is too woody.

Well, that can be a concern, but in my opinion, definitely not at this scale. Also, some species produce a lot more spores and are much more aggressive than others. Oyster mushrooms particularly, mushroom farmers who work with them have to wear high quality breathing masks at all times, or else health problems can build up pretty quickly. Other commonly cultivated species usually pose little health risk, even for people who pick metric tons of them on a weekly basis. A small coprinoid mushroom that pops up every now and then is of no concern. The air is full of foreign particles, mushroom spores, mold spores, bacteria, microscopic animals and a myriad of other things, a healthy human with uncompromised immune system is able to defend itself from most of them.

Yes, but they can also be indicators of the substrate and environment. If it was a Coprinopsis species, that would mean that the substrate is far too rich in nitrogen for cacti. This just means it has a loot of woody material in it.

Highly unlikely. If anything, the mycelium makes the nutrients available to plants as it digests the substrate.

The presence of these Parasola probably indicates high lignin (wood) content.

I would like a plant with cold and water tolerance, and fatness, of T. pasacana, spination of T. chilensis, but with dark coloured spines, and glaucousness and growth rate of Psycho0! Come to think of it, Stetsonia coryne and Azureocereus hertiglianus are pretty close...

It most definitely is not Auricularia mesenterica or any other Auricularia species. That is Peziza vesiculosa or whatever the Australian equivalent is.

Auricularia mesenterica is a cool looking mushroom. Oddly arousing feel to it too, soft, fuzzy on top, skin smooth on the bottom...