No, not the ones you eat. The ones you look at after you eat the other ones...

Since this forum is presumably home to the great majority of Totse's mycologists, I present you with this:

ALTERNATIVE SHROOMAGE!

Imagine if you will: A friend calls, and invites you over. He sounds a bit excited, and you stash the bong and stumble over to his apartment. He meets you at the door and you go inside. A glass/lexan box, perhaps 50cm high and wide, twice that measure in length, sits on the coffee table. Inside is a partially decayed log, resting in wood chips. Covering this material are dozens of clusters of mushrooms, their offwhite, fan-shaped caps jutting randomly from the log. This in itself is a somewhat unusual centerpiece. Your host mentions offhand that they are Panellus stipticus, and you quickly check your mental notebook and fail to recognize any psychedelic significance. "That last blotter sheet was too much," you think, "he's lost it..."

He reaches over and turns off the lights.

"HOLY SHIT! THEY FUCKING GLOW IN THE DARK!"

Before you, the case is illuminated with a soft green-blue glow as the fruited shrooms luminesce.

"Technically," he grins, "they glow all the time. You just couldn't see it before..."

Yes, boys and girls, nature was nice enough to provide three treats within the fungi kingdom. You're surely familiar with pizza-class shrooms, and those of the "visionary" persuasion, but what about the foxfire of lore? Another shroom, Armillaria mellea (notable for being the largest organism on the planet- colonies of clones can span several acres), is bioluminescent, but it is only the mycelium that glows- the fruiting bodies are just boring old shrooms.

So, my fellow fungus fanciers, I give you a mission! Go forth and fructify! The Sporeworks will happily deliver the necessary supplies to your door, even if you live in the spore-smuggling deserts of California or Georgia. Share your fungal feats with us!

And should you need further encouragement: http://www.bioart.co.uk/lux/imageI7M.JPG (http://www.bioart.co.uk/lux/imageI7M.JPG)

Now thats pimp shit! Nice pic

[This message has been edited by Fiend_13 (edited 07-12-2003).]

Dude, these are quite possibly the best (non-psilocybe) mushrooms I have ever encountered.

very cool, man

thanks for posting that pic!

Those 3 shrooms in the back look like there glowing more than others

[This message has been edited by Fiend_13 (edited 07-12-2003).]

lol, my gawd, those shrooms are (the only word to describe them)... beautiful =P . Aside from psyilocibe containing mushrooms, those are God's greatest fungal treat to the earth. lol, i'm still not a HUGE fan of pizza-topping mushrooms, but somehow i'm developing a taste; perhaps due to the ass taste of the magical ones, the pizza ones suddenly seem not so bad.

eat them and tell us how they taste.

j/k

Sadly, 'tis not my pic. I shamelessy ripped it off from http://www.luxgene.com/ . I would like to try my hand at this sometime, though. I just think it would look so much cooler on a rotting log (the natural habitat) than on a little rice cake. We're aiming for aesthetic value here. Various sources seem to suggest that the shrooms glow more brightly on a wood substrate than other materials, too.

Nice pic. even if you borrowed them from another website they are still awsome. You get some credit for finding them. lol

My mind's started turning over. I'll never get to sleep at this rate...

Ok. First off, how to begin the culture? Logic suggests that we start the process like any other, inoculating individual jars. This keeps the variables to a minimum, and ensure that any contaminated specimens are easily segregated. Successful growths can then be transferred to the "box". An overturned aquarium would seem ideal for this. A bit heavy, but pleasant to look at. A custom lexan/acrylic box would be ideal.

Prepping the box would certainly require some work. A log would certainly look better that simple wood shavings/chips. One would need to find a way to remove as many insects as possible, as I would guess that they would attract undesirable bacteria. The entire box could be filled, sealed, and then steam sterilized like a low-pressure autoclave. I don't know how much pressure aquariums are designed to take, but 15psi/ (a number I've seen tossed around for the pressure-cooker sterilization techniques) is attained at something like 35 feet of water, and while the aquarium can certainly cope with 2 feet, I have to wonder...

The problem, though, is that I'm really only familiar with Tek-style growing. That's designed to produce big yields, not pretty ones. I don't know how many flushes a log could sustain.

In any case, the cakes would then be strategically placed (or crumbled, perhaps?) in the aquarium. Here's where the risk comes in. In order to make things look nice, you want large patches of shrooms. One would leave the cakes in the aquarium, and keep it dark and warm to promote the growth of the mycelium into the additional substrate. When things are sufficiently covered, we expose the colony to the world and let the flush begin.

Several problems and/or questions remain, though.

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>

<LI>Will the mycelium easily graft itself onto the wood?

<LI>What if evil mold attacks the colony? You can't just remove a cake when everything's attached to a hunk of wood.

<LI>When does one remove the fruiting bodies? Unlike psilocybes, we want them to hang around as long as possible. What happens when the fruit dies? Does this promote the intrusion of "bad things"?

<LI>How does the mycelium handle constant fruiting? Does it simply exhaust the food supply, or is there some sort of damage done by keeping our fungus constantly pregnant?

</UL>

if i ever embark on growing fungi. these guys will have to be grown after some uh more important strains. but damn thats really cool.

Actually, I made a thread about these mushrooms many months ago. I didn't use such grand language, though, and there was no IMG tag to impress people with.

But now I'm a mod and you have to listen to me! Bwahaha!

I developed an intrest in mushrooms while looking for psychedelic ones, they just look so cool. Fortunately I live on the west coast wich come mid august becomes shroom central. My favorite and most rare find was a "Blewitt", a large deep blue mushroom. Those phosphorescent fungi are pretty cool, thanks for posting the pic. The Vancouver mycological society holds it's meetings every month, and I am just on the cusp of overcoming my anti-social nature and joining up. Rainy days in the swamp?, sounds like fun to me!!

Another reason to grow these:

A large number of BLTCers live with their parents. Normally, playing with vermiculite and syringes in the kitchen would be considered very suspicious activity. But what if you've been doing it for months now, growing these spiffy glowing mushrooms and proving that you have hobbies outside the computer? Ah-ha! Your excuse is at hand! Your mom won't think twice when she sees you in your room dumping cakes into a terrarium! Hell, grow some shitakes for stir-fry. Hide your psilocybes in plain view!

Haha very true and very cool pic BTW. That is a good excuse actually, and even if you were to grow actual "magic" ones then you could just say you grew them wrong or something?

Hehe, wow...its like a free lava lamp...with out he lava...and lamp..well ok its nothing like that at all hehe.

Some ideas:

-The wood I would guess, would exhaust like any other, food source.

-I think the mycelium would hold up fine as long as the wood holds out.

-Might make sense to see if these certain 'Fungi Kings of Glowiness' like a certain type of wood more than others.

-If wood isnt an option...couldnt one make a sort of rectangular substrate log...that I think would look more aesthetic than say the normal half pint glass ones.

-Also, maybe there might be a higher decompisition rate due to the high ass humidity in such a confined space..

-The dying of the mushies wont promote the 'intrusion of bad things' unless you leave them there for ages..it'll be just like pruning a tree, or bonzai just check it everyday.



Well I think that's all for now...they look very very sexy I want some. Might be a thing to grow after my...'magic' *cough* ones are done.

Hmm, i'm intruiged...

Unfortunetly, my parents still wouldn't fall for that [My mum has declared amanitas to be LSD-Dope (If you can explain this extraordinary substance, i'll be amazed, cause i couldn't figure out wtf she was on about)] - I guess you have to be the right kind of person...

But mushrooms rock - Glow in the dark ones, trippy ones, and pizza ones! Mushrooms are offically the best vegetable-like substance [I do know they are a fungus, but counted as vegetables by a ton of people]

I mean... How many other things have so many uses??

Theta are you god? Just wondering.

quote:Originally posted by Fiend_13:

Those 3 shrooms in the back look like there glowing more than others

[This message has been edited by Fiend_13 (edited 07-12-2003).]

thank you captain obvious!

-

cool stuff theta.

[This message has been edited by hartattack2188 (edited 07-12-2003).]

quote:Originally posted by Fiend_13:

Those 3 shrooms in the back look like there glowing more than others

[This message has been edited by Fiend_13 (edited 07-12-2003).]

Is it me or do they look like an Afro-Raver waving his glowsticks?

http://maguires.com/glow_worms/images/fungii/SGW_06.jpg

i found some that glow green.

quote:Originally posted by Fuzzt:

Is it me or do they look like an Afro-Raver waving his glowsticks?



haha good one.

quote:Originally posted by darkwonders:

Theta are you god? Just wondering.

Yes, my son.

I think I just found my new project for the house . Thanks very much for the info Theta . Hopefully I can start this within a week or two and post post some results soon.

just thought i would browse though this older stuff and say, fuck yeah! those things rock. it makes me want to go grow some..hmm..maybe...

a topic of the same nature was posted a few months back and didn't get anywhere near this much of an enthusiastic response.

wait, could you somehow cros thoes with the other "cool" shrooms

like you can do with some plants

quote:Originally posted by GANJAMIN:

a topic of the same nature was posted a few months back and didn't get anywhere near this much of an enthusiastic response.

because he didnt put that awesome picture in the post, thats what made me want to read the whole thing. eh im a kid, i like pictures.