Bounce off the leech that jumped onto your leg. Picking mushrooms turns out to be more stressful than "drawing blind boxes"...

If the little girl picking mushrooms walks barefoot through the woods and hills early in the morning, then the female doctor picking mushrooms will be bitten by mosquitoes, step on mud, and fall into the stream. Occasionally, when she lifts up her trouser legs, she will find a leech eating a full meal...

Why is it so tragic?

To find new mushrooms , of course!

However, even if we go through all of the above, we may not necessarily discover new species. That’s right, finding new mushrooms is like a large-scale card-drawing activity in a game, and everyone involved hopes to draw their own golden legend.

Climb the mountains to look for mushrooms

Some time ago, I was drafted to support my junior brother in collecting specimens. I still remember the first time I went to the outskirts of the city to collect samples, the teacher and the junior brother stepped across the stream in front of them. I was at the bottom and stepped on a rock by the stream. I sat on the bottom of the water and looked like I was about to be washed away by the water. The panicked teacher tried to pull me up, but he didn't pay attention and stepped on another rock and it fell directly on my foot. I pulled my foot out and could only shout "I'm fine" and then climbed out of the stream. At this time, I had just reached the mountainside, and I was unwilling to return the same way. Fortunately, it was summer and I wouldn't catch a cold even if my clothes got wet, so I refused to go back to rest and continued to go up the mountain to look for mushrooms.

Seed-like mushrooms and mushroom-like seeds | Photo provided by the author, same below

Since then, I have always been unable to resist the urge to look for mushrooms when I visit parks. Decaying tree trunks, cracks on the roadside, damp corners, grass after rain, and piled up fallen leaves - these places usually have mushrooms, and even hide mushrooms disguised as leaves or fruits - the downside is that some hidden places may smell terrible.

Mushrooms usually appear in various dark corners

If you see a group of people wearing long sleeves and long pants, each carrying a small box, and some wearing hats and masks in the hot summer, they are most likely going to cross mountains and hills to collect specimens . Although many sampling locations are well-known scenic spots, we did not have the pleasure of sightseeing. Walking on some mossy steps, you will slip and fall several times. When you sit on the side of the road to rest after falling, you can see passers-by falling non-stop.

In addition to the extremely difficult path to walk on, the sharp mouthparts of mosquitoes could not be resisted even with full armor, a bottle of mosquito repellent, and two pairs of pants. The horror legend in the circle was not about wild men in the mountains, but about swarms of leeches under the woods , all pointing their heads at humans. Once, a junior student saw the teacher's trouser legs moving, and when he lifted them up, he found a leech twisting happily.

Fully armed mushroom shoot

After trekking through mountains and rivers to find mushrooms, the first thing to do is to number and register the mushrooms, and take photos of them on the spot, recording key information such as their growth environment and geographical location . When taking photos, you need to place a scale and color card, which is to facilitate the later arrangement and description. When you stop to take photos, the mosquitoes attack most fiercely. Crouching there, the whole person seems to have turned into a large apron, attracting mosquitoes to stop and leave traces of "I have been here".

Many mushrooms are masters of camouflage. They hide quietly under dead branches and leaves, and it is common to be unable to find them when you walk away for a few steps and come back. Although amateurs like me have almost zero ability to identify mushrooms, we can stand in the wild or put numbered signs to locate the mushrooms, and then call on professional players to identify them.

After taking the photos, the specimens will be placed in the specimen box. In order to keep the mushrooms fresh, I will wrap them with leaves before storing them.

Mushrooms wrapped in leaves

The specimen box can be said to be our lifeblood. If something goes wrong with it, we may face the situation where all our efforts will go to waste. Unfortunately, the specimen box is easy to crack as we move around in our daily life, so sometimes we have to hold it with both hands when climbing the mountain. One time, my junior sister was walking with the specimen box, and the box suddenly cracked. Fortunately, the store in the scenic area supported us with an extra-large black plastic bag. We put the box in it, fixed it, and continued to climb with it on our backs. It was not until someone threw a plastic bottle at us that we realized that our appearance might have caused misunderstandings among passers-by. Fortunately, the mask blocked the embarrassment on our faces, and we just had to walk away quietly and pretend that nothing had happened.

The desolate back of the junior sister

For safety reasons, sampling is basically done during the day . After sunset, it is time for us to organize and record the collected mushrooms. In the right season and location, more than a hundred specimens can be collected in a day, which also means a huge workload at night. All specimens need to record basic morphological characteristics : color, cap shape, cap diameter, density of pores or gills, stipe attachment method, stipe morphology, etc. Professional players can often roughly determine the taxonomic status of the specimen after this step of macroscopic identification.

Dried samples

After the morphological characteristics are recorded, the specimens must be packaged , one part for molecular identification and one part for drying and preservation. The packaged specimens will be numbered again according to the laboratory's numbered cabinets, and the photos taken during the day will be renamed according to this number. Renaming photos is very important because the appearance of the specimen after drying is very different from the fresh sample. If this step is omitted, no one may be able to match the specimen with its fresh appearance later.

In this way, each specimen has a number, and finally the photos, dried specimens and DNA need to be matched . If the number of specimens harvested on the day is large, this collective packaging-numbering-naming assembly line operation will continue until the early morning. Drinking milk tea and eating snacks with the smell of roasted mushrooms late at night, I feel so fulfilled. But there is also a situation where we travel thousands of miles to the destination, run around the mountain twice, and can only find a single-digit number of mushrooms or naturally dried fungus. At this time, the food in our mouths is really not fragrant...

Repeated verification to finalize the new species

After finishing the sampling and returning to the laboratory, we entered a new cycle: molecular identification - morphological identification - the next specimen **** and repeat . The DNA of the fresh specimen should be extracted as soon as possible, and the preliminary identification results should be verified by gene sequence comparison; the specimens reserved for morphological identification will be repeatedly checked to see if they are completely dried, and then stored in the specimen cabinet according to the number. Combining the macroscopic morphological characteristics and the gene sequence comparison results, potential new species can be roughly screened out.

In order to conduct a more in-depth morphological identification of potential new species, it is necessary to observe the microscopic structure of these mushrooms (cap epidermis, hymenium, cyst, spores, etc.). The tools used are mainly optical microscopes and scanning electron microscopes. When observing with an optical microscope, it is necessary to first soak the dried specimens to restore the structural characteristics of the specimens themselves, and then slice them for observation. Sometimes pigment staining is also required, and the specific method varies depending on the specimen. When using a scanning electron microscope to observe specimens, a lot of time is spent on setting up and waiting for the instrument. Most people who have intensively observed the specimens later said that they dreamed of spores and the mechanical sounds of the instruments...

It is obviously not enough to describe the microscopic structure with words and photos, you have to draw it on paper by hand. Now you can use drawing software to draw directly on the microscopic photos. When drawing software was not popular, freehand drawing became a basic operation. Not only do you need to observe and measure the specimens on hand repeatedly, but you also need to find multiple specimens in different places as much as possible, or even borrow specimens for observation. If you try to publish a new species with only one specimen, not only will you be chased by the teacher, but your colleagues may not even talk to you. The period of borrowing specimens is sometimes long, and there are even cases where you miss the editor's deadline because you are waiting for the specimens, and the manuscript is eventually rejected...

Give the new species a good name

After going through all the above tests, if it is finally confirmed that the specimen at hand is indeed an undiscovered new species, then it is time to name it ! In order to come up with a suitable name, you need to look through color cards, Chinese dictionaries, Latin dictionaries... This may be the most lively process, and everyone can come up with one or two names.

Because there are so many existing species, many names will be found to have been used by other species after searching. It is really difficult to come up with a new species name that fits the characteristics of the mushrooms you found . If you directly use the place of discovery as the species name, you will be punished by your master. If you use common descriptive words for the appearance, you will find that they are usually already used. It is also difficult to find the right color for the coloring card. After finally finding a matching color, you will find that it has been used by someone else. For example, once, the little teacher enthusiastically asked everyone who walked through the office to think of a name:

"Cracks?"

“I already have.”

"Peach blossom?"

"Yes."

"Fulu?"

"Let me check... it's done!"

At this point, a new species is about to officially enter the human vision, just like the night before a newborn is born. After going through this step, you can rub your hands and start writing articles!

also!

When I talk about my involvement in the classification of large fungi, 90% of my friends will ask me how to identify poisonous mushrooms. In fact, even experts in the field of mushroom classification are not fearless of unfamiliar mushrooms . Although we will bring back common edible mushrooms for cooking when we find them in the wild, we are still quite cautious about uncommon species in most cases. When I brought the new edible beef liver species identified by my junior brother back to the kitchen the day before and put it in the pot, and did not reply to the message in time the next day, other people in the sect thought I had food poisoning, and scared my junior brother so much that he began to question his professional knowledge...

After eating poisonous mushrooms, you may see some strange things...｜Pixabay

I once asked a child how to identify poisonous mushrooms, and the child’s answer was: “Let others eat first, and observe whether they are poisoned.” However, for most people who do not have “others to observe,” it is almost an impossible task to identify poisonous mushrooms, so the safest approach is to only eat mature commercial mushrooms .

Refraining from eating foods you're not sure about is the best way to avoid seeing the dancing man.

Original title: "I saw the teacher calmly flick away the leech that was feasting on his legs and take a "beautiful photo" of the mushrooms under his feet"

Author: Cod

Editor: Jin Xiaoming

Typesetting: Washing dishes

Source: I am a scientist iScientist