Spore Prints.

Yesterday I collected samples of four different fungi to bring home to identify.  One of the problems with identifying fungi is that the colour of the spores is needed to help clinch your ID and even then you may be wrong.

The recognised way to do this is a spore print.  You take the mature cap of a fungus, having cut the stem off, and lay it down on a smooth surface, generally paper of glass.  Leave it at least over night and if you are lucky in choosing a mature cap it will have dropped its spores on to the paper.

For my identification to be correct the spores of all four had to be white.  As you can see one cap wasn't mature enough so no spores.  Technically you then scrape the spores into a heap (one for each print) to get a better idea of the colour, but I am certain these are all white.  So I didn't bother.

The colours have changed a lot with the drying out of the caps and the air where I placed the paper can't have been still enough, as you can see spores blew out from under the cap on some of them.

The four species are:

From Left to right:

Curry Milk Cap ( Lactarius camphoratus)  Herald of Winter (Hygrophorus hypothejus)  Amethyst Deciever (Laccaria amethystine) and Dark Honey Fungus ( Amillaria ostoyae )