Mushrooms: Spore Prints

 

Setting up some simple spore prints with paper, mushrooms and bowls.

First I asked the kids to draw each mushroom and then remove the stem to place the cap gill-side down on the white paper.

It's suggested to place a drop of water on each mushroom to create moisture under the bowl cover. Once the bowls were place on the caps, we set them aside for three days. The results were the same for each paper.

The button mushrooms gave the best print-dark and complete. The portabello mushrooms gave faint prints and the cremini gave barely a print at all. The kids did notice the gills of the cremini and portabello were wavier perhaps not allowing the spores to fall through?

At last, they drew the spore print to match each mushroom.