OK, couple updates.
I need to preface this with a disclaimer. I AM NOT ANY KIND OF NYCOLOGIST. I have been hunting Cyanescens in the Portland Oregon area for about 7 years, and have made some observations about their growth and fruiting cycles too make me think this would work. The real reason for actually doing it was my big mouth. I told the wrong person about my spot, and we had a falling out and...well... I'm trying to make sure they survive.
I went down to my honey hole and found a couple new patches that seem to have good genetics; bountiful clusters with dozens of pins, long and somewhat meaty stems and fast growth. I took a bunch of colonized and fruiting chips from the location and moved them, and it seems to have worked.
The first set of pics is from the first attempt, when I discovered my patch raided and panicked. I had accidentally ripped out a chunk of mycelium by moving a large chunk of wood I thought was too big to have colonized and figured that I prolly couldn't hurt it more and just did it. I lifted carefully the chips, the myc, and the later of dirt and humus beneath to try to keep it as interact as possible, dropped it in the paper bag I had and too it home on the bus.
That was 10 days ago, I think, and the one shroom that was in it doesn't look so great, although the cap did open a little. I bruised it so much in the collection it looks like Jesus before they nailed him up, poor thing. (Maybe the sacrifice will actually be worth it this time...) However, you can see two tiny pins in the pic and that is new growth!
What I want from this is not only to spread the myc and create a home patch that will fruit next year, but harvest this year too. My motto is "nothing is impossible" and I guess this kind of thinking is why.
TRANSPLANT #2- seeing both the possible success of the first transplant attempt and continued pillaging and poaching if my beloved spot ( it needs as much healing, if not more now, than I do thanks to the poachers with machetes
), I went in a vehicle armed with cardboard flats and gardening shovel. I quickly learned that the shovel is useless, as these cyans cluster very close to plants like sawgrass with extensive to networks, the only way I could get it it without flat out being destructive was taking my hands and just feeeeeling my way under the myc, into the dirt, and slowly and carefully lifting the entire thing, peace by piece, out and carefully setting it within the flat.
This was driven to another location and has been living in the flat since, being watered everyday by hand since there has been no response here. The pins present (probably two dozen) have not bruised and have already come it of shock to grow. These were handled with far more care than the first.
I don't want to count any chickens but am happy so far with these results.
As far as a TEK, this isn't one. I would have to recommend that any readers take this only as experiential data and do not try to replicate it. The popularity and proliferation of mushroom hunting groups on the web has had an unintentional negative consequence of less than educated and far from patient people out there in the field doing more damage than anything.
I want to bring more education from a user perspective into this topic. The peculiarities and behavior of this species is mostly a mystery, it at least there is little usable info on them.
They want to spread and I want to help.
null24 attached the following image(s):
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(4,201kb) downloaded 68 time(s). IMG_20191027_135859267.jpg
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(504kb) downloaded 68 time(s).Sine experientia nihil sufficienter sciri potest -Roger Bacon
*γνῶθι σεαυτόν*