spiders

I found an article in Friday's AGE about police 'cracking down' on mushroom use in Western Australia after catching 40 people in possession in and around Balinyup and the pine forests therein. 15 people appeared in court facing a 'possible fine of up to several hundred dollars and the possibility of a criminal conviction.' A police spokesmen said that the crack down was partly a response to 'annoyed locals who were answering there doors to stoned users in the middle of the night.' And that the mushrooms could cause the users 'psychological problems.'

yeah it is pretty laughable - i love the quote from one angry court-goer: 'I reckon that if yer' kids want to take drugs then ya' should let 'em!'

and having more than wife isnt a bad idea

they visit you late at night?

Pan trops have two-spored basidia and i dont think they have been found outside Florida. I remember seeing an american tell a hawker in Ko Samui to fuck off - and the hawker pulled knife on him!! I thought it was funny because hawkers are just a response to tourism. There bad right through South-East asia - bali, Penang, Ko Samui, Phuket - usually only places full of annoying western tourists. Rarely a problem if you get away from these destinations. Im not sure about the mushroom situation in Bali, but from what ive been told, its similar to Ko Samui/Ko Pha Ngan in Thailand. On Ko Pha Ngan they have what Ryche Hawk and others refer to as 'mushroom parties' (In actual fact its a beach rave / fullmoon party on Hat rin beach where westerners dodge fireworks fired into the dancing crowds by locals.) My idea of an enjoyable experience is not spending it with a bunch of drunken german and british tourists and aggressive meth-heads. I remember the boat ride back with about two dozen westeners all handcuffed together all busted by police after being offered and accepting Es. The jaded nature of the locals was sooo sad on these two islands - the resented the tourists as much as they relied on them. Mushroom use/sale there was purely just another ploy to attract the tourist dollars and has no history or spiritual significance to the thai people on these islands. I never actually spoke to one Thai who was interested or had tried the mushrooms available here... [This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 07 September 2002).]

I think personally that mushrooms often tend to give you the feeling that there is something profound there - and you can sometimes see it, but that your not aloud to participate - quite unlike Cid, which certainly allows you to participate. This is not always true. They have always said around the mushroom vendors that the Mazatapec cubensis was 'reknowned for its spiritual connections.' Ive tried these many times and they are pretty low potency for cubensis - and im sure because i was expecting a spiritual experience, i got one, but they seemed much more spiritual, less hyper. It was like sitting around being at one with the garden planst and my cat - nicew experience.

One big litre bag of shredded cardboard spawned with oyster last june yielded well - not as well as straa, but still pretty surprising!

Well im not making any conclusions now - suffice to say that id be surprised if they are all Subaeruginosa proper. Im still waiting patiently for results. I dont think pics on the shroomery will help - impossible to identify aussie natives by site alone although MJshroomer may try and think otherwise. The best bet here is detailed analysis of sporesize, pleurocystidia and other microscopic features. Ive germinated the three (well only A and D so far) on agar so ill have them in the garden by next year hoopefully - along with a suspected ps.tasmaniana, ps.Eucalypta, an odd unknown psilocybe from NSW and well compare with the native melb psilos

Id love to buy a few - ill email you.

Id love to buy a few - ill email you.

ive sent the specimens on to two other mycologists and the initial results from the second guy are as follows: A,C and D have ellipsoid thick walled yellowish to hyaline spores. B has thin walled hyaline spores. A,B and D have classic lageniform to sub-lecythiform with the odd mucronate hyaline pleurocystidia - C had only a few lageniform hyaline cystidia. B and C had a different colour gill which he feels was due to the immaturity of the specimens. I have explained that these two are actually uplifted with possible full-maturity but he's results are a litle different to the first. Ill keep waiting on further results. These indicate that this could be all one wide-ranging species - good old Subaeruginosa - unlike the other two results ive got back. Ill keep you posted. [This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 03 September 2002).]

D has smaller spores than the others - make that possible three species! Im coming up there for sure next may

Your best bet for a start are oysters or shemiji - i think www.fungi.com is a good start.

Sure ive got a few in culture form, but ive got little experience with fruiting them. Ive fruited warm shiitake, shemiji and oysters because there the easy ones - if anyone can fruit Lepista Nuda, cold weather shiitake indoors or Hy.Capnoides there a better cultivater than I!! Honestly, Capnoides and lepista are so annoying - capnoides dies back when exposed to mist or air exchange...These guys make Azures look like a breeze!!

An easy method for these is simply obtaining colonised wood from your local patch - find a piece that has a few fruits attached, break them off and take the wood. In a small jar, mix these pieces of colonised woods with wet verm, pine/garden mulch and soaked cardboard. After about two monthes, this mix should be colonised. As there is no high nutrient contents in this substrate, there is no need to sterilise. Prepare a bed in your garden in a shaded mulch area. Dig a hole, line the bottom with the colonised cardboard, cover this with wet pine needles, pine bark, pine chips, rose mulch, red gum (works well!) or other native soaked wood-chips. keep it moist or just let nature take its course. Subs fruit after cold snaps and heavy rain - they require cold temps and hiogh humidity to fruit, but will fruit aggressively. Agar is like jelly made from sea weed. You can use to germinate spores. frome there you just select the mycelia that displays the best characteristics and use this to innoculate brf/woodchips spawn. or cardboard [This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 01 September 2002).]

a lot of commercial wood chips are sprayed with fungicides - subs fruit poorly on pine bark, better on fern mulch and best on redgum/pine woodchips (light)

Friend of mine says he tripped balls on a quarter of a fly agaric dried... Does that sound like BS?

Sorry mate, No chance - button mushrooms (Ag.Brunnescens) in those grow boxes grow from spawned and colonised compost/manure cased with peat. Subaeruginosa grows on wood debris, requires no casing and would not fruit on compost.

Looking at the docu from Balingup - i think they already have the wavy cap there. Big chunky wavy-caps if i remember

Well Id love to come up and have a look around next year - might even try and get some time off in advance for that. Although the mushrooms may look very different macroscopically, they are both growing in lignious wastes and it appears that they have the same spore size and pluerocystidia. However, until we have time to sit down and really examine these mushrooms for sure, we dont know one way or another. That being said Subaeruginosa itself has been collected not only on a variety of lignious wastes (wood / mulch debris) but also on manure and grass wastes - and its macroscopic variations in form are quite unique for Psilocybe mushrooms - ranging from petite light gilled orange capped mushrooms with bands on the cap to thickly stemmed mushrooms with dark brown wavy caps similar to ps.cyanescens. I should mention that the results are tentative and that the proper basis for identification of psilocybes is generally by microscopic and not macroscopic means. Until we have good mounted pictures of these gill fragments using KOH where we can see the shape of the pleurocystidia without a doubt it is hard to say. At the end of the day, the results are extremly interesting simply because they demonstrate that we have two definate wood-loving psilocybe entities in Australia atleast - and this is an important breakthrough! Next we will have spore measurements to help the identification [This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 24 August 2002).] [This message has been edited by bluemeanie (edited 24 August 2002).]

Some early results: A is the Azure look-alike B is the pale gilled specimen C is the pale capped specimen d is the suba lookalike. I think youve got something very interesting there - B and C are unique! Link: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.p...vc=1&PHPSESSID= more info as soon as possible.

good question - one way to find out

Despite what you might have read, this mushrooms is relatively easy to cultivate providing you can replicate the right fruiting conditions. The mushroom quickly colonises all substrates - millet, rye, brf and manure so contamination wasnt an issue. The easiest method ive used was the innoculation of a rye and manure substrate - i did this pf style with about 15% rye 45% manure and the rest vermiculite. I then created sterile myc syringes from my cultures. These cultures were two native copelandia cyans from Byron Bay and the Blue Mountain areas and after germianting these wild prints ive been trying to isolate - not the fastest growing strain, but the best fruiter and that's been a slow process. Colonisation of the above substrate in 350ml jars took about eight days maximum. I chose to include the manure because spawning manure from rye or brf spawn had been troublesome with c.c. mycelia easily falling victim to contamination. As they require manure to fruit, ive just included this in the original spawn medium, then made trays that have been cased thinly with simple coco coir. Fruiting required a steady 22C temp which was hard to maintain where i live, and this also caused the casing to quickly dry out - so heavy misting was required. After pinset i have been fanning more to lower the humidity and have great results. Nothing new, but i thought id post this anyway.

Chicken shit is notorius for falling to really nasty contaminants. Mycologists suggest the ps.Subaeruginosa first appeared in Western Australia as a result of having spores injested by cattle and then these cattle shitting on wood debris.

Ask him if he is examined specimens of Subaeruginosa from around southern australia - not jsut Victoria. Ask him how the same mushroom could possibly be lignious and coprophilous. Ask him how the same mushroom could develop differing microscopic characteristics - such as lageniform pleurocystidia in some specimens, fuscoid ventricose in others with definate differences in the size of the spores. And how these specimens demonstrate individual and unique fruiting characteristics, unique mycelia characteristics as well as these microscopic variations and that these are demonstratably consistant and stabble through the cultivation of these mushrooms over many generations. Ask him where and if he has found ps.semilanceata in Melbourne