Each set includes detailed instructions, your mushroom culture, and a fungi word search. It’s a great project for anyone with a love of plants, or to do as part of a nature study, or simply because they are beautiful and fascinating. And they’re great for cooking with/eating or just looking at if you’re the non-mushroom-eating type.
This is a pretty flexible project age-wise with the only caveat being that you’ll want adult supervision for the inoculation process for young students so that no fingers get poked:) it’s an indoor project, you’ll need a bag of pre-cooked rice, rubbing alcohol, and some paper bandage tape.
Class- Agaricomycetes: Parasitic, pathogenic, symbiotic, or saprotrophic; most are terrestrial, with few aquatic members; all are mushroom-forming; spore cap has openings; contains 17 orders.
Order- Agaricales: Most are saprotrophic, some are parasitic on plants (causing root rot), others are mycorrhizal; basidia produced in layers (hymenia) on the underside of fleshy fruiting bodies (basidiocarps), in tubes (boletes), or on gills (mushrooms).
Family- Pleurotus small to medium-sized mushrooms which have white spores; gilled mushrooms
Species- P. eryngii