Monday, November 09, 2015

Mushroom sampler

November is a good month to look for mushrooms and other fungi in the temperate rain forest. Even when the sun shines, it's never warm enough to dry the ground, but the temperatures are still usually above freezing. Every time I stopped, crossing the island this Friday, I found mushrooms almost with every step I took, and even up the trunks of trees.

And they're not the mushrooms I'm used to, from the Bella Coola or the Lower Fraser valleys. Of 20 some-odd different species I found, I recognized two, a yellow witches' butter (edible), and an amanita (not). I'll be digging through mushroom books and the web for a few days, trying to identify the others.

Witches butter on an old, burnt stump, with cladonia lichens and mosses.

Amanita, probably muscaria. 

Generic 'shroom. These are hard to identify, because they're so similar to many others.

Really strange mushrooms. The cap seems to be melting, but I didn't see any completely deliquesced ones. And the stems are all twisty. These were growing in semi-tame land; beside the road at the Park entrance.

Very tiny, tall mushroom. The evergreen needles give an idea of the size.

More tomorrow, after I've done my homework.





No comments:

Post a Comment

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

Powered By Blogger