It’s fall and the fungus are out in force. Here are a few I’ve spotted recently. My eye for this kind of thing isn’t great, so they all tend to be fairly large specimens. Nicest by far was this, part of a grouping of large clumps of Laetiporus sulphureus, or chicken-of-the-woods. This grouping was on a dead elm tree. By all accounts these are highly edible, though before I actually go and harvest them I’d want to be with someone who knows what they are doing.
This is a lovely white-and-pink coral mushroom. I haven’t been able to identify it. It might be some kind of ramaria, not that that helps much. If you know, please drop us a line. Operators are standing by.
I also found a few clusters of jack-o-lantern. This is often mistaken for chanterelles, which in addition to being tasty won’t kill you.
This is an impressively sized bracket fungus growing high up on a maple tree.
And some more-or-less common woods mushrooms. There must be a hundred different kinds of these, some highly edible, some deadly. These were growing from under a pile of dead, wet leaves on the edge of a forest. The have gills when young, as is the one on the left, hidden under a sheath that falls away when they open fully.
Lastly, a fairy castle of delicate tall mushrooms. That is, if fairies liked to live under really slimy toadstools. The biggest of these were nearly a foot tall.
All for now. Tune in tomorrow for a photo tour of the seldom-visited Maple Falls.
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