Preserving mushrooms

[mspear]

Shirl den (shirlden at aol.com) wrote:
> In David Arora's book, "Mushrooms Demystified", he states that mushrooms
> can be encased in cubes of plastic resin.  Has anyone tried this?   Would
> like to try this myself but thought it best to see what results others may
> have had.
> Thanks, Shirl.

I've used classical parafin embedding technique on small and medium
sized mushrooms.  You get a preserved specimen that's surprisingly
lifelike.  The method I used is the same you would used for classical
microscopy.  You start with killing and fixing solutions and replace
them with increasing concentrations of wax.  You do need a vacuum oven
and time.  In the end you can keep you waxed mushroom on the desk or
slice it up with a microtome.

Morphology is good but colors can fade.

I can get you some references if you are interesed.

    ---- Mark