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CALIFORNIA WILD

Activites

Making Prints From Mushrooms
An Indoor Activity for Naturalists

Ida Geary

When the fall rains begin, the wine red mushroom Chroogomphus vinicolor appears in my garden, soon followed by the slippery jack, Suillus pungens, with spongelike pores on the underside. They grow under a Monterey pine, and beyond the drip line various Agaricus species pop up, looking like the edible commercial mushroom. Sometimes they also appear in summer on a well watered lawn. With their radiating gills on the underside of the cap and spores like very fine brown dust, they make especially dark dramatic prints.

Spore prints are very simple to make: Cut off the stalk of a mature mushroom where it joins the cap, invert the cap over a piece of paper, cover it with a clear glass bowl, for protection and so you can see what is happening, and let it stand for somewhere between one and 24 hours. The best prints usually come from mushrooms that have just ripened and opened.

If you think the spores will be dark, place the cap onto white or light paper, but if the spores look light, use dark paper for contrast.

When you think you have a print, remove the bowl and mushroom cap and spray the paper immediately with charcoal drawing fixative to make the design permanent. You can move the cap after it has made a light print to another spot on the paper and get a dark-over-light design. Or put caps down on colored and decorative papers for an added effect.

Of course, a mushroom sometimes deliquesces, or melts, overnight on your paper, or something eats the spores, but that’s part of the game. When a print works out well it can look very dramatic in a small frame or on a greeting card.

Fall 1999

Vol. 52:4