Michael Crowe
MycologyField NotesThe grower’s eye

Field Notes / Beneath the cap

The grower’s eye

Beneath the cap, a different story: the architecture of spores, the shape of maitake and the moment a harvest is ready.

A yellow cluster of overlapping caps beside a pink cluster in a grow room.

Under the canopy · One mushroom, many fans · Harvest by maturity, not size · A harvest-to-cooler reference to keep

A photographic edition from the Southwest Mushrooms archive.

Open the notebook / Three questions

A beautiful cap is only the beginning.

Yellow overlaps, pink folds, a hand beneath a crowded canopy. The room is beautiful at first glance. The second glance asks what all that shape is doing.

A mushroom is a reproductive structure, the visible part of a fungus whose mycelium grows through its substrate and releases enzymes to obtain nutrition. That distinction changes the picture: the cap is not the whole organism. It is one of the places where the organism’s reproductive work becomes visible.

Biology / Cornell: Mycology 101
https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/resources/mycology-101/

Where is the cutting point?

An overhead canopy conceals stem attachments. A working view finds the block again, then places the scissors in relation to it. Pages 3–4.

Why so many undersides?

Gill gaps give spores an exit route. Maitake takes a different structural path: many fans, a branching base and pores. Pages 4–6.

When is enough growth enough?

A broad cap is not automatically a better harvest. Species-specific edges and teeth offer more useful cues than size alone. Pages 8–9.

Along the way: four photographic plates, a repeatable way to document a block, and two pages to take from the reading table to the harvest bench.

The working room / Photo essay

Under the canopy

A dense canopy of brown shiitake caps projects from a block held near a workbench.
Harvest archive / 05:05. The brown canopy nearly hides the block. Caps overlap the places where stems attach.

An abundant block can hide the very place a harvest has to begin.

Brown discs overlap until the block nearly disappears. You can follow the cap rims, but many stem attachments sit behind them. The attractive view and the working view ask different things of the camera.

Turn to the scissors photograph on the next page. The brown substrate surface now occupies the center; exposed stems interrupt it, while pale cap undersides gather at the perimeter. The tool is beside those stems, not above the canopy. That relationship is the discovery: the harvest task becomes legible when the hidden attachment points enter the frame.

The tray view supplies the other end of the task. Harvest is not only the moment a mushroom leaves its block; there is also somewhere for it to land. A close-up of the scissors cannot show that receiving arrangement. The wider photograph can.

Handling / Cornell: Post-Harvest Handling
https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/resources/harvest-to-market-guide/post-harvesting-handling/

The working room / Tool, underside, tray

The underside has another job.

Open scissors and a gloved hand beside exposed mushroom stems on a block, with pale cap undersides around its edge.
04:02 / The cutting view. Open scissors enter beside exposed stems; pale cap undersides surround the brown block surface.
A gloved hand supports a tilted mushroom block with stems and pale cap undersides exposed.
05:34 / The underside view. Tilting the block brings pale undersides and the spaces between stems into view.
A tray of harvested mushrooms occupies the foreground of a working harvest room.
06:38 / The receiving view. The foreground tray holds harvested mushrooms, adding the destination to a task seen mostly in close-up.

Spore dispersal / Heino Lepp, Australian National Botanic Gardens
https://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/dispersal.html

The specimen pages / Surface and structure

A room in four textures

A cap’s upper surface and its spore-bearing underside tell different stories. These four views do not reveal them equally.

A yellow cluster of overlapping caps beside a pink cluster in a grow room.
01 / Yellow shelves. Repeated curved rims make the cluster look layered; dark gaps separate the caps. The upper view gives us shape, not a view of every underside.
Pink mushroom caps with pale edges and closely spaced gill lines visible underneath.
02 / Pink, edge-on. Fine gill lines are visible beneath the pale rims. Here the photograph reveals a spore-bearing surface, not just the cap’s outline.
A close cluster of rounded brown caps with pale mottling on their surfaces.
03 / Rounded caps. Pale mottling belongs to the upper surfaces in this view. The pattern tells us about texture; the spore-bearing undersides remain concealed.
Dark brown shelf-like mushrooms with pale rims extending from a bagged block.
04 / Broad, dark shelves. Pale rims describe the outward edges. A shelf-shaped silhouette alone does not tell us whether its underside carries gills or pores.

The pink plate lets the eye follow gill lines. The rounded brown plate offers mottling instead: texture on the cap above, rather than a view underneath. That is a useful distinction when photographing a mushroom. A striking surface detail may be beautiful without answering the structural question you brought to it.

Gill function / ANBG: Spore dispersal; pore-bearing maitake continues on the next page
https://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/dispersal.html

The specimen pages / Grifola frondosa

One mushroom, many fans

The familiar cap-on-a-stalk picture is a poor universal model. Mature maitake is a branching arrangement of many caps.

Black-gloved hands hold an irregular mushroom formation with rounded lobes and a pale lower surface.
Maitake archive / 08:36. Rounded lobes gather above a pale lower surface. This held form is the photographic question, not the mature form illustrated beside it.

Mature maitake / Structural sketch

Structural drawing of mature maitake. Number 1 points to many fan-shaped caps, 2 to their common branching stalk base, and 3 to a pore-bearing underside inset.
Diagram, not archive evidence. A simplified arrangement, not to scale.

1 / Many fan-shaped or triangular caps form a rosette.

2 / Caps connect through a common branching whitish stalk base.

3 / Cap undersides bear pores, rather than gills.

Michael Kuo’s description of mature Grifola frondosa supplies the model above. Follow the branches toward the base and the many fans become parts of one fruiting body. Turn a fan over and the contrast with our gilled harvest photographs is sharper still: maitake has pores.

The archive’s held, lobed formation is not being identified as a normal developmental stage or promised to become the sketch. The comparison expands the mental model; it does not diagnose the photograph.

Mature morphology / Michael Kuo: Grifola frondosa, October 2017
https://www.mushroomexpert.com/grifola_frondosa.html

At the bench / A technique to borrow

Give the next view a memory.

A useful photograph carries its context with it. Keep the whole block, then the detail, then the question.

A bagged substrate block stands on a work surface with rounded dark formations near its top.
Maitake archive / 04:32. A useful record keeps the bag, substrate block and formations in the same view.

01 / Make a pair

Begin with the whole subject and surroundings. Add a detail view of the feature you want to compare. Keep both original files under one record identifier.

02 / Record the conditions of the picture

Note the capture time, viewpoint and lighting. Repeat the angle for comparison, or state the change. Camera brightness is not a room measurement.

03 / Separate observation from question

Write the visible feature and its location first. Add the context you know. Put your interpretation or next question in its own sentence.

04 / Leave a path back

Keep edits as copies. Label cropping or brightness changes. A future reader should be able to recover the wider scene, not only the selected detail.

Keep / Harvest-to-cooler reference / 1 of 2

Harvest by maturity, not size.

Look for a species-specific change of shape, not simply the largest mushroom on the block.

Shiitake

Most of the cap is open, with the edge still rounded or curled and the gills visible.

A flat, pancake-like cap is late in Cornell’s guide. Maturity affects keeping quality, so extra size can come at the expense of a useful harvest window.

Oyster

The cap retains a slight curl and the flesh remains flexible.

Cornell describes flatter clusters as more fragile. Read the cap edge and handling texture together rather than waiting for the widest possible spread.

Lion’s mane

Teeth point downward and are about 1 cm long.

This is Cornell’s approximate harvest cue, not a universal threshold. It is a different kind of signal from an opening cap: here you watch the teeth.

Harvest maturity / Cornell: Post-Harvest Handling
https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/resources/harvest-to-market-guide/post-harvesting-handling/

Next: ready the vessel, detach gently, remove debris, then cool and protect the harvest. No archive plate is being presented as a calibrated example of these maturity cues.

Keep / Harvest-to-cooler reference / 2 of 2

The cut is not the finish.

Plan the receiving vessel and the cold destination before the first mushroom leaves the block.

01 / Ready the receiving vessel

Use a food-safe harvest vessel that has been washed and thoroughly dried. Have the receiving space ready so the harvest has a prepared destination.

02 / Detach gently

Cut or snip near the stem base, or use pulling and twisting where appropriate. Choose the method for the mushroom and situation; avoid treating one movement as a rule for every crop.

03 / Remove debris before storage

Brush off debris rather than washing the harvest. Use a damp cloth to dab remaining dirt if needed. These are handling steps for sound mushrooms, not a way to rescue spoiled product.

04 / Refrigerate after cleaning

Cornell recommends 36–38°F (approximately 2–3°C). Arrange that cold space as part of the harvest, not as a problem to solve when the receiving vessel is full.

05 / Protect with air exchange

Choose food-safe protective packaging that allows air exchange. Paper bags suit small quantities. Breathable or unsealed packaging matters more than a blanket rule against one material.

06 / Check the handoff

Confirm that the buyer has cold storage. Your cooler is one part of the route; the receiving end needs to be ready too. These steps do not promise a fixed storage life.

Handling and refrigeration / Cornell: Post-Harvest Handling
https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/resources/harvest-to-market-guide/post-harvesting-handling/

The back page / Films and further reading

The edge is a place to begin.

An edge can hide a stem, open a route for spores or signal a harvest window. Looking closely is most useful when it changes what you do next.

Photographs: full-frame derivatives from the original-resolution masters. Source IDs, frame-selection times and hashes are in the accompanying source notes. Writing: new visual analysis, editorial method and credited paraphrases; no transcript quotations. Diagram: original explanatory drawing based on Kuo, not an archive image.

The reading table

Print it. Keep looking.

Home and office editions, with a separate two-page harvest-to-cooler reference.

The magazine

US Letter PDFA4 PDFFull plain-text issue

Harvest to cooler

US Letter reference PDFA4 reference PDFSource and frame notes