Berengar

Schizophyllum commune.

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!

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...

Hello everyone! Recently I started wondering, why aren't T. terscheckii hybrids more popular? On paper, it seems like a potentially perfect combination, large, thick, beautiful, fast growing, cold tolerant columnars! But the seeds are practically impossible to find. Why is the reason for that? Do they hybridize easily with other species and produce normal number of seeds? Or are people generally more interested in various bridgesii and pachanoi hybrids? Flowering-size T. terscheckii specimens are also probably more rare in collections. Is that the reason? I'm sure lots of folks would love them, especially people like me who's winters are just a bit to wet to keep faster growing Trichocereus species outside year round without complications. I would implore anyone with flowering specimens of terscheckii and other Trichocereus to give hybridization a shot, and sell or trade the seeds to the community! Is the flowering season over in Australia? Thank you very much for reading!

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.

You can post all your zed240's hybrids here. I started mine in early February, will eventually graft a few but will mostly leave them on their own roots. They all seem nice and healthy, the fungicide must have helped, even tough there is a mold growing in some of the trays that is resistant to peroxide and fungicide, but it doesn't seem to be a plant pathogen. The crosses are Scop x Norma, Tipz macro x scop, Hahn pach x scop, Gawler peru x scop, Yowie x scop, Norma x Anakie, Gawler x Norma, Tipz x Norma, Super pedro x Norma and Norma x Hahn pach. The labels are on the lids, and I forgot to label the photograps to know which is which, will do it next time.

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.

Yup... Coldest winter in at least 50 years in this area, probably longer. Some nights it went down to -10!! Even some days were below zero until noon! That never happened during my lifetime. I hope you are right, and this cold won't become a common occurrence. Last winter, not even a tiny scar on any on them. This winter, even a few of my indoor kept plants died (a few bridgesiis and all variagetes) :(. At the moment, I don't have the will to plant any more of them in the ground, but I probably will this summer or next.

I've finally decided to start growing a few plants in the ground, and I'm looking for some suggestions and advice. I've always thought that my climate is not suitable for most cacti, although people often have various Opuntia and Aloe planted outside in my town. It's not really cold, but it's very wet. On most maps it's just lumped in in 'zone 8', but according to some other maps and USDA definitions it's somewhere between 9a and 9b. Below is a chart with average temperatures and rainfall. This year has been somewhat colder, there were a few days with sub zero temperatures © for an hour or two in the early morning. Do I stand any chance? Is anyone growing cacti in similar conditions? Any advice on what I can do to minimize my losses? I plan to grow several Opuntia species, Aloe, Agave, Lobivia ferox, Echinopsis leucantha and various Trichocereus species/hybrids. I'll keep this thread as a sort of growlog, and update it with pictures when I start working. For now, all advice is welcome!

Yup. It's toxic, causes stomach problems.

I won't have to worry about grasshoppers, every single trich died from the cold this winter.

Agrocybe sp.

Nest fungi are Cyathus striatus, yellow ones are Leucocoprinus birnbaumii

Leucocoprinus ianthinus