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MUSHROOM
STUDY TOUR EVALUATION OF SOUTH INDIA
A
Few Illustrated Mushroom Highlights
Fall,
1986
by
Gary Lincoff
INTRODUCTION: Prior to the 1985 Mushroom
Study Tour of northern India and Nepal, Jason Salzman toured the
proposed route
to evaluate the likelihood of a successful trip. We think we should do
the same
before we propose a mushroom study tour of South India. So, Gary and
Irene
Lincoff, Emanual and Joanne Salzman, and David Arora and his wife
Judith plan
to meet south of Bombay in September, 1986. We choose this time because
we
think this will be best for seeing the most mushrooms in this area. We
schedule
visits to a number of hill stations in South India, including
Ootacamund and
Kodaikanal. In addition, we want to visit a tiger reserve, and a number
of
scenic sights along the way. Although our scouting trip is pleasant
enough,
compared with last year’s tour of northern India and Nepal, we find too
few
mushrooms to justify organizing a group trip to South India.
MUMBAI
(BOMBAY) [MAHARASHTRA]:
Irene and I fly into Bombay (now
Mumbai) in the middle of the night. As we discover, it’s a city that
never
sleeps, a vast, sprawling human drama unfolding on the shores of the
Arabian
Sea. We drive through town. It is hot, humid and, at 3 in the morning,
people
are everywhere, walking about, talking, playing music and lying on the
ground
wherever there is space. We meet Manny and Joanne Salzman at the
airport for a
6am flight to Coimbatore. From there, we drive up to Ootacamund, one of
the
premiere hill stations in South India.
OOTACAMUND
[TAMIL NADU]:
Ootacamund is up at more than 7300
feet above sea level. It is chilly, breezy, and rainy! [It receives
about 50”
of rain annually.] It also seems to be barely populated compared to
Bombay. It
is a forested area, and there are pines and Eucalyptus among the
mycorrhizal
trees that we see. A quick walk about turns up the ubiquitous Laccaria
laccata,
a Russula and a Scleroderma. The rest are decomposers on the ground or
on wood,
like Agaricus, Entoloma, and Gymnopilus. The next morning we do a
search of the
grounds about the hotel. We find lawn fungi like Bolbitius vitellinus,
as well
as an immature giant puffball, Calvatia sp., and some Lycoperdon
perlatum. The
most exciting find is a blue-staining Psilocybe species, which is
especially
interesting because we haven’t seen reports of this genus in South
India.
We go up to Dottabetto at 8600 feet.
There we find common grassland and wood debris mushrooms, like Coprinus
plicatilis and Psathyrella candolleana, as well as Cortinarius under
Eucalyptus. We find about 30 different mushrooms for two days of
collecting.
Gary
Psilocybe
Manny with sacred cow
mushroom similar to a Cortinarius
mushroom-like fruit
Ooty from below
COCHIN
[KERALA]:
We drive down from Ootacamund to
Cochin, a port city on the Arabian Sea. It is raining on the way down
and there
are lots of cars, people and cows on the road. Cochin was a vital
center for
Jewish life in India before the establishment of the State of Israel.
Now there
are very few Jews left in Cochin. One we meet is an MD, Dr. Blossom
Simon. The
only mushrooms we find are Marasmius oreades, a species of Coprinus and
Conocybe tenera.
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Manny & Joanne Salzman,
Irene Lincoff, and Dr. Blossom Simon, the last Jew in Cochin |
PERIYAR
TIGER RESERVE [KERALA]:
We meet David Arora and his wife,
Judith, and proceed to the Periyar Tiger Reserve, by ferry and bus and
boat and
van. Periyar is a large wildlife sanctuary in southwest India. It’s
situated at
3000 feet above sea level, and has a high annual rainfall of 100”. Most
of its
forested area is composed of tropical evergreens, trees we’re
unfamiliar with,
and find difficult to identify because they’re so tall. In addition to
40
tigers roaming about the preserve, there are countless elephants, wild
boar,
barking deer, Indian bison, monkeys, and so on. We come for the
mushrooms. We
are told to keep our eyes open. We are not told what to do in case of
an attack
by any animal. It turns out that the only animal that attacks us is the
ubiquitous leech. We walk the trails picking mushrooms and picking up
leeches
along the way. With our attention somewhat diverted by the anticipated
charge
of hidden wildlife, we still manage to collect a dozen species,
including a
blue-staining Psilocybe on wood, an attractive Agaricus, some large
Macrolepiotas, and some tiny fringed cup fungi. We are puzzled that we
see so
few mushrooms in so forested an area with such a high rainfall.
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| Gary |
Davis Arora on top of bus |
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| Jungle sleeps during the day,
wakes up during the night |
forest trail |
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| Agaricus sp. |
Psilocybe sp. |
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KODAIKANAL
[TAMIL NADU]:
From the Periyar Tiger Reserve we take
a bus to Kodaikanal, a hill station resort town at about 6300 feet
above sea
level. Parts of the town, especially around its central lake, look as
well-groomed as NYC’s Central Park. The weather is clear and cool, a
great
relief from the heat and humidity of the lowlands. It hasn’t rained
lately but
its annual rainfall is 65”, and it’s so pleasant to walk about that we
take
little notice of the dryness.
David takes us to the spot where there
had been a hospital, the one in which he was born! The site is near the
edge of
the Kodaikanal plateau, and it looks out, seemingly forever, over the
valley
below and beyond.
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A mushroom foray in a local pine woods
nets us the Fly-Agaric, Amanita muscaria, as well as a Suillus, some
Russulas,
Sclerodermas, and a variety of decomposers.
Walking through town we notice a woman
in a beautiful sari sitting on the ground near a dusty intersection,
holding a
basket in her lap. She is surrounded by other women, standing, and
similarly
dressed. She is selling something in her basket. A glance tells us
they’re
mushrooms! She is selling a smooth, green-capped Russula. It’s
something close
to Russula cyanoxantha. We buy some and strike up a conversation with
her. When
she learns about our interest in mushrooms, she shows us what she also
has in
the sash of her sari. She’s got a number of blue-staining Psilocybes.
It seems
that European tourists who are on their way for a holiday in nearby
Goa, stop
off in Kodaikanal first, and she is there to sell them what they’ll
take with
them to Goa to party. We buy some of these, also. The green Russulas
are cooked
for us with our dinner, and are very good.
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| woman in sari selling mushrooms |
with basket of Russulas |
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| Russula sp., green, smooth cap |
Psilocybe species, was hidden in
woman's sari |
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| women carrying wood on their
heads |
forested park 25 miles away |
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| pine trees |
Amanita muscaria
(above)--Scleroderma sp. (below |
Manny and Joanne leave for New Delhi,
and the next evening, David and Judith and Irene and I try the
Psilocybe. We
have rented a cottage for the night, a change from hotel life. The
cottage is
sparsely furnished but it comes with its own firewood, and we are
promised hot
tea in the morning. We find getting to the next morning more difficult
than we
had imagined. The mushrooms make us jolly but we feel rooted to the
floor, and
we feel colder than we might have otherwise. We burn all the firewood
we have
and, with great effort, even go outdoors in the dark trying to locate
something
to burn. Under the influence it is very hard to tell what is burnable.
Inside
the cottage, we eye a small wooden table, the chairs about it, a chest
of
drawers, even the wooden bed frames. Everything we mention makes us
laugh all
the more. How we manage not to burn down the cottage is anyone’s guess.
The next morning we part ways, and
Irene and I take a bus for Berijam Lake, a large lake with a
surrounding pine
forest about 20 miles or so from Kodaikanal. On the bus a girl and her
mother
notice our mushroom designed t-shirts. We converse and learn that they
are off
to collect edible mushrooms for a restaurant in town that caters to
foreign
tourists. So much of what we learn on trips like these is totally
unexpected.
On arriving at the lake, we can hardly
get off the bus as people are getting on. They are throwing their bags
through
the open windows onto seats they want to hold, or even climbing through
the
windows themselves. We squeeze off the bus, which quickly fills up and
pulls
out. We ask someone nearby when the next bus will leave and learn that
the bus
leaves every day at the same time. We turn about and discover we are in
a
beautiful setting. Unfortunately, except for a tiny teahouse where the
bus
stopped, there doesn’t appear to be any other buildings. Eventually, we
are taken
to meet the forester in charge of this area. He is puzzled that we have
come
with no means of returning to Kodaikanal. We tell him we plan on
walking
through the forest and then walking back to town. He won’t hear of it.
A woman
on foot along that stretch of road is not safe. We learn from him that
the
forest he’s in charge of is a planted pine forest. A forest is
something
useful, utilitarian. What we think of as forest is what he calls
“bush,” which
to him is a worthless mixture of trees and shrubs. We walk about but
find very
few mushrooms anywhere. As beautiful as the site is, it hasn’t been
receiving
the kind of rain we experienced earlier in the trip. By late afternoon
a number
of trucks are rolling through the area on the road to Kodaikanal. We
are
offered a lift in the cab of one of these trucks and manage to return
to
Kodaikanal by nightfall.
MADURAI
[TAMIL NADU]:
We leave the next day for Madurai, a
city filled with highly ornamented pyramid-like temples, the oldest
city on the
Indian peninsula, located near the southern tip of the country.
Elephants
wander the streets, even putting their trunks into the open windows of
buses,
begging coins from passengers! We are now only 9 degrees north of the
equator,
and less than 500 feet above sea level, so it is hot. And, though it
gets 35”
of rainfall a year, at the moment it is dry. We find no mushrooms, and
few
areas to even look for them. We return to New Delhi for a few days of
rest and
relaxation, and then fly home.
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 temples cow dung drying along a wall Irene with Hindu myth sculpture |
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