Svampy business - Fun for Fungi Fanatics (part 1)

So, let's talk Mushrooms.

I can imagine all kinds of lovely free association occurring in your mind right now. The more perceptive of you have read in other posts that I am from the Netherlands (or as most people seem to call it 'the country where Amsterdam is located').

'Ergo', you might think, 'she could come from Amsterdam'.

'That must mean', you then logically deduce, 'that she knows her way around hasj, weed and hallucinating mushrooms'.

This, I am sad/happy to say (please read only the word you would like to see) that I know absolutely NOTHING about mushrooms. I am probably as ignorant about the fungi surrounding me as the last president Bush was about state affairs. My complete mushroom-knowledge can be summed up in these below points:

• The white moldy things for sale in supermarkets are called 'champignons' or in Swedish 'champinjoner' (original)

• Champignons sounds awkwardly French

•  Yet despite the French-sounding name I like these fungi

• There are other edible fungi but I knoweth not whence they are from

• Another Swedish word for champignons is 'Svamp' which is like the English word 'swamp', as in a moist place that you sink into and never come out of. When I saw this the first time, I thought it hilarious, to the surprise and annoyance of the person selling the swamp to me.

Upon arrival in beautiful Stockholm, however, I was amazed to find out that apart from Champignons, the Stockholmians are really into 'cantharellen' - or the very difficult Swedish term for them: kantareller. Knowing this, my mind opened up to all kinds of mushroom-business, and on a certain walk around the campus area of the University - of course I was very pre-occupied with hard thinking about the material we were supposed to study that day - I found these beauties....

Fungi on campus Stockholm University

I couldn't help but wonder... Fungi-stew tonight?

Now I have no idea what they are, so if you are a moldy person, fungi-freak, or as scientists like to call them, a  'mycologist', please enlighten me as to what kind of mushy this is, and more importantly, can I eat it (without dying a horrible death)?

By the way, I will be going on an excursion soon, picking svamps in a swamp down South of Stockholm soon, so if this is the last post I will enter on this blog, you will know that either swamp or svamp turned out to be fatal (or maybe both). 

So, hopefully to be continued....