Place the cap spore-side down on a flat surface, such as paper, glass, metal foil, or wood.Find a mature mushroom (immature mushrooms don’t produce spores).The basic instructions are simple and straight-forward: Even some of the toothed mushrooms can work well, if their teeth hang from the flat under-surface of a cap, as in the hydnums. The boletes (which have pores) and gilled groups such as the amanitas are good examples. And because the bottom is flat, when the spores fall on a surface that is also flat they show the pattern of gills or pores perfectly. There’s also little chance of a mature fruiting body persisting after it has stopped producing spores, as these tend to rot or be eaten by insects or slugs pretty quickly. Because the flesh is soft, the mushroom is easy to harvest. The easiest-and the most visually interesting-prints come from classic-looking mushrooms, those with soft flesh and a flat bottom covered with the gills or pores that produce the spores. The spores are so tiny that they stick to the surface, coloring it just as chalk dust or charcoal would, hence the word “print.” However, the details vary depending on the type of fruiting body and the interests of the person making the print.Įasy Spore Prints: Gilled Mushrooms, Boletes, and Others The basic method of spore-printing is quite simple place a mature, spore-producing fruiting body on a smooth surface, such as paper or wood, and wait long enough for the released spores to build up into something visible. There are those who make and collect spore-prints purely as a kind of art. Spore prints are often beautiful, or at least interesting to look at, because they show not only the spore color (which can be lovely shades of red, green, white, black, or almost anything else) but also the pattern made by the arrangement of gills, pores, or whatever other spore-production structures the species in question has. The spore-printing technique is the only effective way to gather fungal spores, so cultivators who wish to start from wild-collected spores begin by making spore-prints. But there are other, less dire, reasons as well. There are edible species that resemble poisonous ones in almost all respects except spore color, so foragers especially really do need to get in the habit of making prints. The most important reason to make spore prints is to check the color for identification purposes. The only way to discover the color is to collect a large number of spores just as they come out of the fruiting body-making a spore print, in other words. They are too small to see individually without a microscope, and microscopes don’t show color very well. Spores are the tiny, dust-like particles fungi (and a number of other organisms, from slime molds to ferns) use to propagate themselves, just as most plants use seeds. It’s a fascinating hobby, and it’s absolutely critical for reliable identification. ![]() Anyone who becomes serious about mushroom identification-and quite a few whose interest is more casual-will first want a mushroom field guide and then naturally progress to mushroom spore prints.
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