Clay Flambé

@cleanmuddauber.bsky.social

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Wood-fired ceramics, mostly . Mushroom pics, in season . Here instead of Insta because of Ayn Randian oligarchical tech brah bull . Disobeying fascist conformity in advance (and during, and ever after)

Bondarzewia berkeleyi, Berkeley's Polypore. Trainer for scale
Phaeolus schweinitzii, sprouting from the root of an Eastern White Pine
A vinrant native wood lilly, L. philidelphicum
A young Bondarzewia berkeleyi. I dare you to pronounce it correctly: "Bon-dar-TSEV-ee-ya BARK-lee-eye." The species's binomial: in honor of two titans of mycology, Apollonaris Semenovich Bondartsev, who survived the siege of Leningrad and liked to climb up onto decrepit roofs in his 80s to see what might be eating the rafters, and clergyman-scholar Miles Joseph Berkeley, who identified the cause of the Irish potato famine, ran a boys boarding school, and sporulated 15 children
A chestnut bolete growing in my backyard, near a maple. Easy to recognize due to small size, light chestnut color, cotton-filled stem when young that becomes hollow when older. When you locate one, look harder, you'll find more. In my experience, they tend to appear in the same place for a few years at a stretch, then disappear for a few years. What places? Near hardwood trees, but not too near, no closer than the dripline. Where it's fairly moist, but not too moist. Where there's leaf litter, but not too much leaf litter. In the grass, but not in wide-open grassy spots, more on verges. It's nice that bugs and slugs don't seem to like them. I've read there's a look-alike mushroom in Spain and Portugal that will give you cramps and runs for a week. But then only there, and it tends to be tinged pink and grows in piney dunes, unlike this wonderful bolete. Speaking of lookalikes, I don't know how a person can't tell a funeral bell from a velvet foot or a jack-o'-lantern from a chanterelle unless new to mushroom foraging or blind. Really, lookalikes only look alike if you haven't yet learned what to look for, or for some reason refuse to see. Take your time. Recognize the depth of your ignorance. "When in doubt, throw it out." Or better, just leave it alone in the first place. Learn from those with more experience, and stick to collecting the familiar ones if your plan involves ingestion. I won't collect a species for the table unless I've seen it many, many times before/noted all of its macroscopic characteristics/consulted the books and with others more knowledgeable. Because, come on, really. Most mushrooms are edible, but why would you want to? After all, most just taste mushroomy! 😂
A Bevel-Edged Bolete, Tylopilus badiceps, in the duff. Note how the chestnut-colored cap cuticle extends slightly beyond the pore surface, creating the appearance of a band around the cap rim, giving this bolete its common name. There are other characteristics that help define the species, like brown bruising of the white pore surface, the cap and stem color, etc. Some think it smells like molasses. One of those species you can collect for the table. Don't bother. There are so much better out there
Varnish conk, North American Lingzhi, fruiting off a hemlock stump in a shady forested spot. When just popping out in the spring it can be cooked. Not bad, but not great. A little too much like marshmallow. I do make a double extraction tincture from it, also a bitter tea that tastes like turpentine smells, for stress relief and immune support. You might live to be a thousand if you drink it regularly, say Taoist monks. Or maybe if you drink it regularly it just feels like a thousand years, gack it sucks
Craterellus fallax in the duff
A red mouth bolete, Neoboletus subvolutipes, growing at the forest's verge
Two bicolor boletes fruiting from the forest duff. A meaty species likened to porcini. It's a grade A edible. Mushroomers think they're best dried before being reconstituted and cooked, like porcini and most other boletes. Doing so really brings out the umami flavor. Cooking them fresh, they're just too plain
Clockwise from top right: Hemileccinum subglabripes, the banana bolete; Hydnum repandum, hedgehog or sweet tooth; Boarangia bicolor, the bicolor bolete; and Gyroperus castaneus, the chestnut bolete. All of these species are commonly found growing in association with various hardwoods, trading minerals for carbs at the mycorrhizal junction between root hair and mycelium. Each species is easy to identify, once you get to know it Broke out the dehydrator, cut up and dried these for use come winter
Questions of intent and consciousness of intent aside, bee-wise and human-wise, spores just don't care
A young specimen of B. variipes growing near oak. Close relative of B. edulis--the famed porcini.
Two reishi/varnish conks on a fallen oak tree. The only reishi I've seen in Maine is Ganoderma tsugae, which grows solely on Eastern Hemlock. That means this is probably Ganoderma sessile, which decays hardwoods like oak. However, both brackets have noticeable stipes (stalks)--not something you normally see with G. sessile. Could it be G. lucidum? Unlikely, because G. lucidum is restricted to Europe--except for patches in California and Utah that likely escaped from growers there. The only way to resolve the uncertainty would be to study the spores under a microscope. I have the time, but neither inclination nor microscope. Pleased just living with the natural beauty of these brackets
The suede-like pileus (cap) of a brown birch bolete, Leccinum scabrum
X. chrysenteron, the red-cracking bolete, because yes, the cap cracks, and where it does, the edges of the cracks turn red
Hericium erinaceus, lions mane mushroom, sprouting out of a beech log inoculated a few years ago
Front stack of the anagama chamber before a four-day, around-the-clock wood firing
Pots
Some pots
Almost loaded soda chamber
Pots being loaded into the soda chamber of the 🦞gama