1. You are a mushroom expert who has been contacted to identify a mushroom that a college student has eaten. The doctor only has pieces of the mushroom obtained after the student was given a chemical to cause emesis. However, the doctor knows all other pertinent information in the case. The doctor urgently needs to know the identification of the mushroom so that he can prescribe a treatment. While the doctor is talking to you, he is looking at the pieces of mushroom under the dissecting and compound microscope.

A. What questions do you have to ask the doctor so that you can identify the mushroom?

1. Once the doctor knows the identification of the mushroom, what information does the doctor have to obtain from the patient in order to prescribe the correct treatment?

1. You want to grow Agaricus bisporus commercially.
   1. Outline the steps you will have to learn before you can grow this species commercially.

1. What is required for you to compete with established firms that grow this species? What parameters need to be controlled?

3. If one eats Lentinus edodes, ones mental and physical health as well as the taste of the food in which this mushroom is included improves. Verify this statement.

4. Discuss the do's and don'ts of composition in mushroom photography.

5. Fill in the following chart

	Psilocybin	Gyromitrin	Phalloidin	Muscimol
type of chemical (not its formula)
formula
mode of action

1. Up until approximately 1960, training in the identification of mushrooms could be obtained at three institutions: University of Washington (with Daniel E. Stuntz), University of Tennessee (with L. R. Hesler), and the University of Michigan (with Alexander H. Smith). Only one of these individuals was trained as an agaricologist (a person who studies mushrooms). His philosophy in training students to identify mushrooms can be traced back to the first person to study mushrooms in North America. Who was this individual, why was he so influential in agaricology, what was his agaricological genealogy, and why was this genealogy restricted to only a few schools.

7. What nutritive value does one obtain from eating mushrooms? Can mushrooms be the only food, which makes up the diet of vegetarians?

8. Can fungi be useful in the treatment of tumors? Discuss and provide examples.

9. Discuss the steps you would take in order to make paper from polypores? Certain polypores are best suited for this endeavor because the fruiting body of these polypores possesses a distinctive trait. What is this trait?

10. Discuss the steps you would take in order to use fruiting bodies of fungi to dye wool? What advantages are there in using the fruiting bodies of fungi rather than the organs of vascular plants or the thallus (simple plant body) of lichens? How can you tell which fruiting body of a fungus will give you an unusual color when it is used to dye wool? Will this fruiting body possess any feature that will provide you an idea that you can use it to dye wool?

11. Discuss the ecological web between lignicolous fungi, rotting wood, nematode catching fungi, nematodes, insects, hypogeous fungi, flying squirrels, spotted owls, conifers, and endophytic fungi.

1. You have obtained a job as a teacher at a local school near the wilderness areas in northeastern Alaska; there is no electricity but the entire area is wealthy because of the discovery of oil. It becomes known that you have taken a course in the identification of mushrooms. All six of your students come from a family, all the members of whom are mycophilic. This fact alone tells you something about the genealogy of the family members and also about how important mushrooms are to this family. The student tells you that all of his family put a silver spoon in with the cooking mushroom. If the spoon does not turn black, the mushroom is edible. You cringe in fear of the lives of the members of the family. In addition, because you remember the red face of your mushroom instructor when he told you how to tell an edible mushroom from a poisonous one. So you relate the information to the student. He kicks you in the shin and he tells you that he is going to go back to his family and he is certain that the family will remove all the students from the school. Wow what a stressful situation. You may not have a job after this instance and of course you blame it on the mushroom instructor you had.

1. What is the genealogy of the family of the student and how important are mushrooms to their nutrition?

1. What specific fact and what information from your mushroom class did you relate to the student?

1. So how do you save your job?