Прыгоды з жыцця прыроды
Adventures from the life of nature
Вячаслаў Грамыка
Для сярэдняга школьнага ўзросту
Выдавец: Беларусь
Памер: 263с.
Мінск 2003
An amateur mushroomer is attracted both by a young and mature old pine forest. There you can see lots of mossiness mushrooms. They differ in size. If you notice a big mushroom, then be attentive and you are sure to find nearby some new ones, like little cones. To gather mossiness mushrooms is nothing but a pleasure! The best basket for mushrooms is quickly filled.
But a mushroomer is particularly attracted to the forest when the “king” of mushrooms begins to spring up — the white edible boletus or “borovick”. Mushroomers tell about their lucky finds with animation and pride. On their way back from the wood they put these “kings” on top of all other mushrooms in the basket.
A meeting with this mushroom, which has put on a dark brown cap, gives certain emotional joy, puts you in good mood. And if you are lucky enough to find this mushroom, don't hurry away from this place because it doesn't usually grow alone. You should walk around the nearby bushes examining the ground and moss inside and around and you are likely to find several “youngsters.”
It is important to know how to gather mushrooms correctly. They should be cut off with a sharp knife but not pulled up so that not to destroy the mushroom spawn. This will help to gather a good deal of mushrooms in future as well.
When gathering them you have to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. The most dangerous is the pale toadstool (death-cup). This is a lamellar mushroom (agaric) having a high stem with a rim; the cap is of bluish color. Other poisonous mushrooms are fly agarics and false honey agarics which differ from edible ones by their bright yellow color of the blades in the inside of the cap. Don't pick up mushrooms which stems become blue very soon.
One should remember that edible mushrooms may cause poisoning, too, if they are not boiled or fried long enough. If they get proper thermal treatment then you will have a peculiar dish on your table.
Mushroom time lasts until late autumn. White and orange cap boletuses are replaced by greenish autumn mushrooms “zelyonka” and “volnyanka”, then by honey agarics.
An experienced mushroomer goes for saffron milk caps to an old moist pine forest, for honey agarics — to the places with lots of old wind-fallen trees. Tight, thick-stemmed white boletuses are most likely to be found in the wood where oak trees grow. And so as to cut off as many oily headed “maslyata” as possible you should head for a young coniferous wood, though it is not easy to force your way through tightly growing young pine and fir trees, but the result is worth it.
People have been indulged in gathering mushrooms since ancient times. Our forefathers didn't often have enough meat for their meals, that's why they had to add forest gifts to their dishes. But mushrooms are really a high-caloric vegetable meat.
But are they really vegetables? It is hard to make it out. Naturally, at first sight mushrooms belong to the vegetable kingdom. They don't move, they don't consume organic food...
So they can't be representatives of the animal world.
Plants contain chlorophyll and under the influence of the sunlight they absorb the required components from the air and generate vital activity products.
Mushrooms don't contain chlorophyll at all and they accumulate not starch, as all plants do, but glycogen just as animals do. Mushroom tissues contain chitin, as is characteristic for insects. What a confusing thing!... No wonder that a famous French botanist Vayan called mushrooms “a damned tribe” as if they had been created by nature with the purpose of driving scientist to despair.
During the period of mushrooms growing, as the saying goes, neither the old no the young can resist the temptation. You shouldn't hope for good luck in an overshadowed wood, in the places with deciduous trees. It is quite different when you make for an old pine tree forest to a mixed wood with small hillocks and lots of open or half-darkened clearings or to a pure birch-wood. You will not lose if you head for a young coniferous wood or clearing with lots of old moldering stumps.
Mushrooms are children of thunderstorms and pouring rains after which warm sunny weather sets in for several days. But it may happen so that after a heavy short-term thunderstorm a light summer breeze, having blown off cumulus clouds, will suddenly cover the sky with a layer of gray heavy clouds and then it may drizzle monotonously for a day or more. So much the better! The same happens after a continuous heat when the soil begins steaming and the air in the wood is overfilled with humidity.
And then it will shower all of a sudden and the soil in the wood will be watered to the full.
Mushrooms will push out from under the ground, unfolding the thick wood soil bedding and raising last year's dry leaves and needles and even pebbles on their little resilient caps.
Families of multicolored russules, scatter about the glades; the light moss-grown coniferous woods get filled with a strong
odor of the white mushroom — “borovick”. On the edge of the wood, in a thin aspen grove, you can see new bright orange-capped mushrooms.
Least fastidious to their “dwelling place” are brown cap bolletuses — “podberyozovicks”.
They grow mostly in the birch tree woods and groves. Their appearance varies depending on the place of their “dwelling”. Those growing in a dampish birch tree wood have a dark grey cap, a white stem, slightly thickening downwards, with little black and brown scales on it. When you break partly the white flesh of its caps it will get pink. This mushroom appears earlier than its other variants. Later it is replaced by an emerald-colored one. It looks the same, only its cap is olive-colored, but when touched it turns quickly black.
In damp marshy birch woods you can find this kind of mushroom with greenish parasol and a thin long stem. But such mushrooms growing usually on a clearing in the woods at some distance form the trees impress most of all. They are thick, tight ones, which resemble the “king of mushrooms” and are called “charnyaks” (blackish podberyozovicks).
Within the summertime the soil got warmed everywhere. Mushroom spawn has spread out far and wide, especially that of brown cap boletuses. So don't get surprised when you happen upon a mushroom right on a forest path.
But gathering orange cap mushrooms gives a particular pleasure. Sometimes their orange-red caps make the moist grass of aspen grove look like a multicolored carpet. You seem to be cutting them off endlessly — it looks as if instead of one a lot more of them spring out from the ground. This kind of mushrooms is found in fir-and-birch woods, but they grow there alone or in small groups. Their caps are lighter, of some yellow-nut color, but they may sometimes grow so big that half of a mushroom basket can be covered with one cap.
Coral milky caps can become an easy catch for a mushroomer. They grow in big families. Tall, with strongly rolled-down terry edges, coral milky caps of pink shade are met most often in sparse woods. Those of white shade, the most numerous, are
found everywhere, at every turn in a low forest, on spacious openings and on the edges of woods.
You shouldn't avoid these mushrooms. True, uncooked they taste rather bitter. But if their caps are peeled, they were kept in cold water for some time, pickled after that or simply boiled properly and dressed with onions and sour cream, the dish will be so delicious that you will lick your fingers.
In thick fir woods, if you are lucky enough, you can find wonderful milk mushrooms and saffron milk caps.
Saffron milk caps are particular mushrooms. You can fry them fresh or you can boiled them and use them to dress soups and various other dishes. They can be pickled as well, but salted saffron milk caps are most delicious.
In fir woods, fir-type saffron milk caps are most often met. Their stems are long and the caps are slightly greenish on top, with circles of the same shade. Their flesh is strong and tight, quickly reddening at the break place and exuding bright red sap. Pine-type saffron milk caps grow in pinewoods. Their stems are low and the caps are wider. Their red coloring is less evident, it is lighter.
As for milk mushrooms, they are good exclusively for salt pickling. One can't help getting excited when he suddenly comes cross a scattered group of these particularly welcome mushrooms. Their broad white plates, slightly suggestive of the light sky blue, greet affably a happy mushroomer. That's the luck!
A black milk mushroom can be found in the wood much more often. In its form and size it resembles the white-type brother, but the color of the top is quite different and the stem is dark, nearly black, the blades beneath the cap are grey, getting darker in old mushrooms. This mushroom is considered to be less valuable. Its flesh is not so delicate as that of the white type. Though this mushroom can be successfully utilized as well. But it will require more care; before being salted they must be boiled or kept for a long time in water changed every now and then. In case all this has been patiently done this milk mushroom becomes a good dish on your table.
Everyone knows the white edible mushrooms “borovicks” and chanterelles. The white mushroom, the “king” of mushrooms, is the most precious and welcome. It is distinguished from the whole mushroom kingdom both by its size and gustatory qualities. A real mushroom giant! Its heavy cap stands in proud beauty on a very thick white stem, filling the surrounding wood with a strong mushroom odor. The same odor is added by dried white mushrooms to the dishes and to the whole place where they are cooked! In general, the white edible boletuses ancj chanterelles are universal mushrooms and they are utilized in the kitchen in any condition.
The nearer autumn times approach the more frequently one can come across clusters of long stemmed honey agarics. They don't even imagine that they can grow separately. Honey agarics appear at once in a countless number and grow so close and tight to each other that they seem to cover the topsoil like a fir shawl, or they may stick round old rotten stumps. It seems as if they have got together here from all parts of the wood and sing and dance in a ring, now gathering in small groups, now scattering in chains outwards from its center.
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