Gabriolan.ca

You’ve seen Shaggy Mane mushrooms, and maybe you’ve fried some up for dinner, too. But did you know you can make ink out of them? Shaggy Manes (Coprinus comatus) are inky cap mushrooms. MushroomExpert.com explains about inky caps:

Inky caps are fascinating mushrooms. They are saprobes, assisting in the decomposition of wood, dung, grassy debris, forest litter, and so on. Most of the species have black spore prints and gills that liquefy, at least partially, as the mushroom matures. The resulting ink provides the common name for the inky caps, and can actually be used as writing ink. [continue]

We have a bajilion Shaggy Mane mushrooms on Gabriola, so I couldn’t resist using a few to make ink. Here you see the results.

I was writing with a reed pen that had been cut for Arabic calligraphy – probably not the best option, but it’s what we had on hand, so it’s what I used. The ink was a little thin and uneven, so I’ll have to work on changing that next time.

Here’s what I did to turn the mushrooms into writing ink:

I picked some Shaggy Manes, and left them in a glass jar on the back porch for a few days. In the photo here you see some newer mushrooms in the jar on the left. The jar on the right contains mushrooms that have been sitting around for a few days, so they’ve pretty much melted into ink already.

Once I had enough ink, I thought that perhaps the ink should be thicker, so I put it all in a pot and heated it on the stove. I don’t know if this helped or not, but it sure stunk up the kitchen. This ink is smelly stuff.

Anyway. Easy project, yes? Go try it, and see if you can get better results than I did.

Oh, and if you have any tips for making better ink out of mushrooms, I’d love to hear them.

Tags: Coprinus comatus, ink, Shaggy Mane