Subject: Using this group to ID mushrooms

From: [email-masked] (George Riner)
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 1995 19:11:45 GMT

There have been a few postings recently about people asking "What is
this?"  I've asked a few ID questions myself and received e-mails in
response.  My experience with the Boston Myco Club is that you get the
best ID by having a good specimen in hand and having people look at
it, touch it, smell it, check the spore print, put it under a
microscope, etc.  But even then, it's not uncommon to have something
show up that stumps 'em all.

How best to use this group to get identifcation help on a fungus?
Post pictures?  Have a standard form for characteristics to be given
to help people read and identify, e.g., size, habitat, spore print
color, gill/pore/etc. characteristics, size, colors (I can imagine all
the synonyms for 'brown' that would accumulate!)...

Perhaps a bionet.mycology.id group?

Or is this just too difficult and too tempting for some to post a
description, get a response and consider it done and eat the thing
only to regret it later and feel that someone who ventured to ID a
fungus over e-mail/newsgroup postings is to blame?