I agree that moving air helps. Also, I’d put the heat source under the screen (not real close). You should be able to feel the heat rising through the screen. At the level of the screen, the temperature should be like that of hot bathwater that you can tolerate on your skin, but at the same time you KNOW ITS HOT. According to the various folks the temperature at the object drying should be between 100 degr. F and 120 degr. F. I find that amanitas that are dried quickly are the best for examination under the microscope. The faster the drying the less decay and the less irremediable collapse of the important cell structures in the gills (very important for microscopic study of species in section Vaginatae (and other sections as well). Don’t worry if things don’t go well the first time. On the other hand, you don’t want the temperature to be high enough to cook a specimen.
A vegetable dryer like the ones Eddee described work well, too. I use a Swiss dehydrator that was aluminum instead of plastic. I’ve heard they aren’t made anymore.
You can get the fastest drying at good quality with two elements, (1) moving air (convection off a light bulb is pretty good air movement especially if you have a tube that will act like a chimney bringing the heat from the bulb of the mushroom in a contained space) and (2) air that is as dry as it can be. For example if the air in the space in which the light bulb or vegetable dryer is placed is air conditioned, the hot air will have much lower humidity than the ambient cooler air (which is probably dryer than exterior air). However, even in a space in which the humidity is somewhat high, the hotter air from the dryer will always have lower humidity, water will be sucked out of the specimen…just more slowly.
The problem in very humid spaces is not being able to dry the material fast enough and not being able to keep the dried specimen dry when it’s off the heat source. Be sure that your material is as crispy as a the crispiest of potato chips before you quit drying it.
NUMBERING:
It is not necessary to number individual specimens. It’s only necessary to number collections. When a mycologist is examining a collection and finds two different species in the collection, the mycologist (if he/she is doing her/his job) will mark the collection as “mixed,” give a justification for this observation and divide the collection by separating the group of specimens into groups representing the taxa she/he determines to be different. The segregated groups may still be in the original container (envelope, bag, box, etc.) or may be put into two different containers. Labeling will indicate the whole history from the collection of the material through the decisions of mycologists that examine the material over the years. Nowadays, the labeling is probably generated from a data base that also records the history of review of the collection.
To identify a collection, one uses collection location, collection date, name of colletor(s), collector’s number, place in which the specimen is deposited.
U.S.A.: NEW JERSEY — Monmouth Co. – Roosevelt, elementary school grounds, 10.ix.2009 A. B. Jones 9-10-2009-13 (NY). Fairly straightforwardly means the material numbered 9-10-2009-13 was collected by A. B. Jones on the 10th of September 2009 on the grounds of the elementary school in Roosevelt, Monmouth County, New Jersey, and is deposited in the herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden. In case anybody wonders about whether I made up the abbreviation “NY,” I didn’t. There are standard codes for herbaria (notice they are not acronyms or abbreviations) that once were in a book called Index Herbariorum and now can be found on-line under the same moniker.
Very best,
Rod
