More than a Sporeprint

When I come home from a foray where I gather specimens to study, the first thing I do is try and get a spore print. I lay out as many 3x5inch index cards as I have species of mushrooms and write the date, place and a description of each mushroom on the card. Then I add a glass slide to my card and put the mushroom on top of that slide. This way the spore print will be deposited on the slide and I can look at the spores within an hour or so.

My process was a bit thwarted with this amanita though. I had set up all of the mushrooms for prints after my foray, but left them overnight to get the print. Usually, I never have to worry about anything, but when I came back in the next day to look at the prints, there was a massive pile of larvae in the shape of the large amanita I had collected. This was just too cool not to document… and yes, it is so gross. I cleaned that up right after shooting the video. Everything else gave me great spore prints, but this one was an unsalvageable blob of goo and worms!