RBBR Update And Hunting

RBBR Update

I promised I would post what good growth and bad growth on the RBBR plates looked like so here it goes.

On the left is an example of a plate that was not very successful, the RBBR dye is still very visable and the fungi did not grow too far. The plate on the right however is a very successful plate because not only did the hypea reach the edge of the petri dish it completely decolorized the plate.

In this photo, the plate on the left has decolorized more of the media than the hypea have grown over, this also means this plate is successful with this contaminant, but it is a slower growing fungus, so it is not exactly what we are looking for. The plate on the right has grown a fair amount of hypea but has only decolorized a minimal part of the media, this would still be a successful decolorization but it is too slow of a grower and not efficient enough for us to really use it.

I also thought I would show you how we take the measurements on the plates every other day, we use the millimeter side of the ruler and place the plate on a light table to see the total hyphal growth from left to right and top to bottom, same goes with the decolorization. Some of the plates are much harder to measure than this one is.

Hunting

Today we also picked our plots and spent a few hours in the rain, we found tons of soggy mushrooms everywhere, so we decided to bring some back to lab to id and photograph!

This guy was enormous! The stipe was so thick you had to hold it in your hand like an ice cream cone. I think it is a common fall mushroom, although it is inedible it's still very fun to find these guys because of their size. According to my sources they are very easy to find, but I was still excited to find it!

This is the underside of a giant "shaggy parasol" (a Lepioda rhacodes I think) mushroom, Janet, Joey and I found a whole bunch of these guys on campus and brought a few back to the lab to brag about our mushrooming skills. The funny part was we didn't even have to leave the trail to find them. They are semi rare mushrooms that are apparently quite good to eat if prepared right.

This is another big one we found, Clitocybe gigantica, another common fall mushroom, but again, HUGE!!! I just love finding the big ones! I think again this one is inedible.

This one is called Stropharia ambigua, it is a fairly common mushroom as well, with a yellowish cap that is pretty viscid, and very obvious white veil remnants around the cap. (this is the wrong view to see that) and dark spores. (You can see the spore color well in the gills.)

Our plots yielded much smaller mushrooms than these guys but hunting for mushrooms is very exciting no matter where you go!!

Well it's off to bed for me! Catch you guys next week!
-C