NABOKV-L post 0023613, Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:13:23 -0200

"One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit' po gribi (looking for mushrooms)...no agarics were taken; all she picked were species belonging to the edible section of the genus Boletus (tawny edulis, brown scaber, red aurantiacus, and a few close allies), called "tube mushrooms" by some and coldly defined by mycologists as "terrestrial, fleshy, putrescent, centrally stipitate fungi."...Their compact pilei-tight-fitting in infant plants..., boletes differ considerably from the "true mushroom," with its preposterous gills and effete stipal ring. It is, however, to the latter, to the lowly and ugly agarics, that nations with timorous taste buds limit their knowledge and appetite, so that to the Anglo-American lay mind the aristocratic boletes are, at best, reformed toadstools./ Rainy weather would bring out these beautiful plants in profusion under the firs, birches and aspens in our park, especially in its older part, east of the carriage road that divided the park in two. Its shady recesses would then harbor that special boletic reek which makes a Russian's nostrils dilate-a dark, dank, satisfying blend of damp moss, rich earth, rotting leaves. But one has to poke and peer for a goodish while among the wet underwood before something really nice, such as a family of bonneted baby edulis or the marbled variety of scaber, could be discovered and carefully teased out of the soil." Speak, Memory.

quotes obtained from Nabokov, Mushrooms - Amateur Gourmet www.amateurgourmet.com/.../nabokov..

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