From: mycos@shaw.ca   
      
   On 21 May 2007 06:31:59 -0700, ram  wrote:   
      
   >  I've organized a   
   >> identification workshop this weekend, for the public, most   
   >> participants have never picked mushrooms...and so I've been saving   
   >> specimens of everything I find, although i would love to have a morel   
   >> to show them...- Hide quoted text -   
   >   
   >   
   >And morel we did have.  And it was me that found it!  The first of the   
   >season.  Actually, when I invited some participants to come and look   
   >at it, one lady saw something else in the leaves, a morel! and she   
   >frantically scraped away the leaves and to my dismay, decapitated the   
   >morel!  my goodness!! stop!  i said, but in her frenzy of greed, she   
   >continued to scrap away the leaves, reducing her morel to   
   >irrecoverable bits and pieces.  It was as if she wasn't satisfied with   
   >the morel and was hoping to find something more delicious   
   >underneigth...dam,mercy...poor morel...   
   >   
   >In this day and age, people expect that for food to be tasty, it must   
   >be red and yellow, brightly coloured and sugary...   
   >Quite un-morel like!   
   >   
   >in fact, this lady was one of those annoying foray attendee's that   
   >follows the leader and picked every old dried Trametes and demands   
   >"can I eat it?" , and shows visible signs of anger when the answer is   
   >(most often) "no".   
      
      
   LOL. That brings to mind an episode I had while giving a talk on edible fungi   
   at a park up   
   here in BC. I had stooped at the lake below the park and harvested some fungi   
   including   
   one rather well aged Russula xerampelina. I figured it would be a great   
   example of how   
   important odor was in the ID of species. So I get up to Lac le Juene Park and   
   am telling   
   how the different structures mean this or that regarding where to place them   
   taxonomically   
   when I grabbed the Shrimp Russula and broke it into a couple chunks and handed   
   it out with   
   a "and some even smell like shellfish!" Well, admittedly this one was starting   
   to smell   
   more like the hold of a shrimp-trawler, but you should have seen the burn this   
   dude gives   
   when he takes a smell of the thing. I thought he was going to throw it at me!   
   I guess I   
   shouldn't have expected what was probably a citified social climber judging by   
   the slacks   
   and watch that I started to notice once I had decided to keep him within my   
   field of   
   vision afterwards, but sheesh! You try to show someone how variable mushrooms   
   are versus   
   their "I don't like mushrooms" statements that assume all mushrooms taste like   
   A.   
   bisporus, an idea about as nonsensical as thinking they don't like vegetables   
   because they   
   can't stomach spinach or carrots e.g.   
      
   "Boy I tell ya...life as a naturalist used to be good back in the old days   
   when nature had   
   respect!"    
      
   Anyhow! As you were!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)