Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi: How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc.McIlvaine, Charles
Science
Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi: How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc.
McIlvaine, Charles
Cooking (Mushrooms); Edible mushrooms -- North America; Fungi -- North America; Mushrooms; Mushrooms, Poisonous -- North America
Mr. H.I. Miller, superintendent Terre Haute and Indianapolis Railroad,
writes: “Most of the mushroom books give greatest space to the A.
campester. For some parts of the country this may be desirable, but for
Indiana and Ohio, considering the food value, the P. ostreatus is the
best fungus we have in these states, from the fact that anybody wanting
a mess can nearly always obtain a basketful of this variety, whereas the
others depend upon a good many weather conditions. Having located a few
logs and stumps in the spring, where the P. ostreatus grows, these same
stumps and logs can be used all season. The crops are successive, and
while some of the spots seem to be barren for a few days at a time, the
others will be bearing. It does not make much difference what the kind
of log or stump, whether it be beech, oak or elm, or what the species of
tree. I think I have found them on all our forest trees, and it is not
necessary for the tree to be dead. If there is a decaying portion, the
spores seem to be carried by the little black beetle that infests the
ostreatus, from one place to another, and wherever a small spot of dead
wood is found we are likely to find the P. ostreatus. This being the
only edible mushroom that we can find in large quantities all through
the season in this neck of the woods, it seems to me that a general
knowledge of it will serve the economic purpose more than any other
fungi.”
The presence of the P. ostreatus and its esculent companions is noted
from our northern boundary to the gulf. Poplar, maple, birch, hickory,
ash, apple, laburnum and oak trees are its favored residences. Deer feed
upon it, and kine are attracted by its scent even when deep under snow.
When properly selected and _slowly_ cooked, the Pleuroti are toothsome.
From the fact that the spores of this fleshy and valuable genus find
fostering lodgment in many trees when in decay, it is more than probable
that the several species can be propagated by planting their spores upon
such decaying woods, or by transplanting the mycelium.
Growths of P. ostreatus, P. sapidus, P. salignus, and probably other
species of Pleurotus, can be forced, by watering the spots upon which
they are known to grow. Dr. Kalchbrenner mentions that the P. sapidus is
in this way cultivated in Hungary. Acting upon this mention the writer
had good success with P. ostreatus. Experiments in this direction are
likely to be interesting and rewarding.
No species is suspected of being noxious.
An analysis of P. ostreatus is given by Lafayette B. Mendel, Sheffield
Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, Yale University, as follows:
Water 73.70%
Total solids 26.30
The dry substance contained:
Total nitrogen 2.40
Extractive nitrogen 1.27
Protein nitrogen 1.13
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