![]() This works okay for mushrooms whose spores are not white! For white-spored mushrooms use black paper or clear plastic or glass. Place the cap, gills downwards, on white paper. Some stems snap easily from the cap, but in most instances it is best to cut the stem using a scalpel or a very sharp knife. Remove the stem so that when you turn the cap over the gills will make close contact with the paper. The particular colour of the spore print can help you narrow down the number of possibilities in your quest to identify the specimen to species level. For example in the family Russulaceae some genera have whitish spores while others have yellow spores, ochre spores etc. In some families there is a range of spore colours. The colour of the spores, when seen en masse, is one of the best ways of determining which mycological family the specimen belongs to - for example the Amanitaeae (which have whitish spores), Cortinariaceae (which have rust-brown spores), Entolomataceae (which have pinkish spores) etc. With the other mushrooms that you’re likely to come across – ascomycetes and polypores – the spore color isn’t generally helpful in determining their identity, and it can be difficult or impossible to obtain: ascomycetes generally release their spores in one puff at a time, and if you miss it you’re out of luck polypores are so tough that they often remain on the tree for long after they’ve stopped producing spores, so a spore print is impossible.One of the main reasons for making a spore print of a mushroom or any other kind of fungus is to help in the process of identification. Spore color is also potentially helpful in identifying boletes in the genus Gyroporus (which has a bright yellow spore deposit) but the same issues apply: it’s simpler to just check for the hollow stem (another Gyroporus characteristic) and by the time they’ve deposited enough spores for a print, they’re usually too deteriorated to do anything with. The distinction of Boletus vs Tylopilus is pretty much the only useful distinction that you can make among boletes by spore color, but even there (a) there are usually other ways you can get the same information and (b) most people collect boletes to eat, and by the time you can get a good spore print off a Boletus it’s usually too far-gone and wormy to eat. Notice that I’ve only been discussing boletes and gilled mushrooms, and that almost all my examples are of gilled mushrooms. Note also the black annular zone on the stem, and the blackened shreds on the edge of the cap these confirm what you would guess from the gill color: that this is a black-spored mushroom, and they also let you know that this mushroom started out with a partial veil. Notice, however, that these gills are sort of evenly mottled throughout, showing that this is part of the natural development of the mushroom, not caused by a bruise or a localized insect attack. Some other black-spored mushrooms can have this appearance as well. This is a black-spored kind of mushroom whose spores mature unevenly on the gills, giving them a finely mottled appearance. Photo by ZacaOne of the few special cases in this regard is the genus Panaeolus. ![]() Panaeolus gills produce their spores unevenly, resulting in a mottled appearance. The first photo on this page also shows annular zones on the stem. This is called a ring zone, or an annular zone. In cases where the partial veil completely collapses against the stem, it can leave a smeary-looking spore-colored zone on the stem. At this point, you can also see that they match the gill color fairly closely.įinding spore-colored shreds on the stem helps us form our species concept for the mushroom: not only do we now know the color of the spores, but we also know that this mushroom had a partial veil. These shreds have been colored brown by the discharged spores. There are a few shreds of this partial veil clinging here and there to the edge of the cap, and to corresponding places on the stalk. For instance, this mushroom is a Cortinarius, a mushroom that has a wispy partial veil. The brown spores of this Cortinarius have colored the wispy shreds of partial veil that still cling to the edge of its cap and corresponding places on the stem.Natural spore deposits can be quite subtle, and spotting them may depend on your species concept for the mushroom.
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