Stipe, Pileus, and Cap

Look; get over it; I like IKEA.  In fact, I would have IKEA's child if that were possible.  I know, I know; not only have you heard that before regarding clam chowder and Buster Keaton, but you also know that some of their products last, yet others disintegrate upon the first washing.  Nonetheless, I generally like the style plus the idea of family as it's incorporated into the furniture settings, and love to put things together.  So I subscribe to their EXCITA UPDATUM emails and well here we are, God Jul.  The Swedish Christmas decorations are now available, and oh, hold me back, THERE'S MUSHROOMS!!  Enchanting fabric mushrooms to hang on the tree, the kind with red caps and white stems, known to us mycology folks as Russula emetica.   

This calls for a run up to the Canadian IKEA.

Now since you thought this was to be about furniture, let me clarify: no.  This is about my fascination with that creature who has now claimed an entire kingdom for its own, the fungi.  Specifically, the fleshy fungi we call mushrooms; the rusts, yeasts, blasts, smuts, molds, and the very interesting slime molds are left to high-powered microscopes.  I'm a visual sort, and like to hold what I'm looking at, if not eat it.  Don't get all goosey-loosey, because if anything, I am not advising that you go out and pick mushrooms; lord, lord no.  Too many chances for near misses, and one variety, Amanita phalloides, the Death Angel, makes you sick as hell, lands you in the hospital where you feel better after three days, and then wham, kills your liver in hours and you die.  It tastes lovely.  There are a number of them that will allow you to think you are going to see your next payday, but then ha! the rug of life is pulled out from under your feet.

So, if you get lost in the woods during mushroom season, try to be lost with me along, cause I can probably pull you through and deliciously, as well.  But please don't forage and then toss a silver dime into the cookpot.  Allegedly, if the dime turns black, the mushrooms are toxic; if it remains shiny, they are safe; this is a lie the neighbors will tell you when they are trying to get rid of you, permanently.  Do buy them from either the grocery or one of the mushroom vendors recently found at Farmer's Markets.  Or go to an Asian store, they usually have fresh specimens of unusual varieties which are edible.  Okay, enough lecturing scholarship.

Neither animal nor plant, their cell walls are composed of chitin, the stuff of crustacean and insect exoskeletons.  There were two species my family would gather when I was little; Suillus luteus, and Boletus edulis; they both surprised me with their undersides, for there were no gills, just a layer of a porous, spongelike surface.  The Suillus have an aroma of wild woods and wet grasses; they like to grow under larch trees and have a viscous cap, their common name is Slippery Jack.  The Boletes are a dry mushroom whose stipe is thicker than the cap when young; it smells almost of ammonia until fried in butter or added to a soup, and then it shines.  Buy them dried in cellophane bags, they're called Porcini.

I studied wild mushrooms as an adult with a local mycology group at the Museum of Natural Sciences, then found courses in college, both giving me enough training to identify at least twenty edible and eighty toxic species.  Small beans in the mycology world, but enough for me.  I will never eat anything that could possibly be cross-identified with a poisonous species, there is just too much variation to make it either safe or worthwhile.  But in the meantime, they are as beautiful as seashells. and as curiously engaging in every rainbow color, a few will glow in the dark; they are anti-carcinogenic and good for you; eat one like a vitamin pill every morning, before your daily apple.

The Christmas tradition of mushroom ornaments seems to come from the European fairytale, and my tree is full of Deutsch Pilz fungal festivity.  Really, it looks better than it sounds; I'll take some tree selfies this year.  See if you can spot the new IKEA additions, you'll win a hard Christmas candy filled with raspberry that's stuck to the bottom of the bowl at Grandma's.

To the south of this city, there was given a blanket of snow, and as I walked to the car earlier, the bite of winter blew around me even though it was still in the 40 degree range.  You could see the snow falling in dark bands over the Boston Hills, causing a tentative look towards the last remaining bright fall leaves clinging to the trees.  Dark in the morning when I leave, dark at night when I return.  No wonder I feel like soup and a blanket on the couch.

The crescent moon is low in the sky, the two Dippers are to the north, ladling and pouring out the Milky Way.  Sleep well in the same gravity that holds us all safely, tethered to the ticks and rhythms of living.  Be at peace, be at rest.  Good night.