Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2015
VOL. 99 ISSUE 40
SINCE 1916
Table tennis: international style Pepper spray deployed at Curbside fight Tyler DAvis | @TDavis_DE
A bbie i yun | @ AbinbolA 09 Shoujie Ho, president of the SIU Table Tennis Club, serves the ball at the 2015 International Games Tournament hosted by the International Student Council on Saturday. In 2014, the Table Tennis Club—consisting of players from China, India, Malaysia, Russia and Taiwan—made it to the National Collegiate Table Tennis Regional Championship in Pittsburgh. Despite a serious ankle sprain during a tournament in 2013, Ho still plays table tennis and motivates his team with his passion for the game. As club president, Ho wants to bring more awareness to the various styles of table tennis played worldwide. He said one way to do this was to recruit more international students. Chung-ying Tsai, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering and winner of the 2015 International Games Tournament, said he has been playing table tennis since he was 10. Chung said the club works hard, practicing every Saturday for four hours or more.
Carbondale police deployed pepper spray to break up fights in and around Curbside, a bar on West Main Street, early Sunday morning. Just before 2 a.m. Sunday, police responded to a call claiming Curbside was over maximum capacity, and officers used pepper spray to break up a fight involving about 30 people in the bar, CPD Lt. Paul Edwards said. There were also four people fighting in the parking lot south of Curbside and west of the Carbondale Civic Center. “A few people complained of injuries from the pepper spray,” Edwards said. He said foot patrol officers also responded to help disperse the crowd in the parking lot. There were state troopers on the scene, and about 40 to 50 people leaving the bar shortly after the altercations. Witnesses complained of officers’ force restraining one man, who they said was not involved in either fight. Edwards said no one was arrested as a result of the fights in the parking lot but would not say what arrests were made in connection to the incident in Curbside. Ambulances were on the scene to treat injuries, and Edwards said no officers were injured during the altercations. Curbside’s management could not be reached for comment.
Morel mushrooms fuel spring fever sAM beArD | @SamBeard_DE From the Mario Bros. to mind expansion, various mushrooms have had distinct roles in cultures around the world. But come April in southern Illinois, the only mushroom playing with people’s minds is the morel. This particular fungus can only be found for a few weeks each spring and is prized for its culinary value, selling for $15 to $25 a pound at the Neighborhood Co-op, located in the Murdale Shopping Center. With warming temperatures and late night rainfalls, now is the perfect time to begin hunting morels, said Travis Neil, a graduate student in plant biology from Yorkville. Neil, who is beginning his seventh year of hunting morels, said southern Illinois
Hollow from bottom of stem to top of cap
Stem connects to very top of cap
Stem filled with cottony fibers Stem connects to bottom of cap
Black Morel
False Morel
l yDiA M orris | @LydiaDEsign
@DAilyegypTiAn
is by far the best place in the state to find them. “Historically, I get pounds in a day,” he said. “But I try not to destroy [the habitat] so I can come back year after year.” Overharvesting is one concern about hunting, but different areas have restrictions on collecting mushrooms. Southern Illinois has a variety of public property owned by various agencies ranging from the U.S. Forest Service and Illinois Department of Natural Resources to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, said Jennifer Randolph, a natural resources coordinator at Giant City State Park. “Every agency has its own guidelines,” she said. “While some places you can hunt morels wherever you want, there are other places where there are restricted areas.” Giant City State Park—located about a 15-minute drive south of SIU— encompasses 4,055 acres, but on the north side 110 acres have been set aside as a nature preserve, and no collecting of any kind is allowed there. Randolph said hunters should be courteous of others by giving them space when they are mushroom hunting, and to take a bag with holes in it—such as a mesh bag onions are purchased in. These bags allow for the mushrooms to be easily carried while distributing reproductive spores throughout the forest, increasing the likelihood of more morels in future seasons. Randolph, who also gathers morels, has found them in pine stands and said
H oliDAy W Agner | @HolidayWagnerDE Nicholas Flowers, a senior studying plant biology, picks up a false morel to distinguish the differences between false morels and true morels on Sunday near Devil’s Kitchen Lake. Flowers said the easiest way to tell if a mushroom is a geunine morel is to slice it open vertically. Morels have hollow centers while false morels do not. While morels are considered a prized mushroom to find and eat, a false morel can be very harmful to consume. False morels contain monomethylhydrazine which can cause symptoms ranging in severity from vomiting to death. Mushroom hunting is an exciting and competitive hobby for some, but it is important to be informed before injesting any of the mushrooms found in the wild.
Giant City is a popular spot for amateur mushroom hunters. She said while there are some with years of experience, nobody is truly an expert at hunting morels. “If they tell you they’re an expert and they know where to find them, they’re lying,” Randolph said. “Morels are a cantankerous little mushroom, because you might have a spot that you’ve had
success at for 10 years or so, then you go one year and there is not a single morel to be found.” Different people have different techniques they follow when hunting morels. Oldtimers will urge beginners to start under ash, elm and cottonwood trees, but Randolph said there is no guarantee of success. Please see MOREL | 3
Once more morels are harvested, check dailyegyptian.com for some recipes.