Photo Friday and Fungi Friday - 2019 Mushrooms

Here's part 2 of some 2019 fungi finds for #fungifriday by @ewkaw and for the photo Friday contest.

First up we have Lycoperdon perlatum. This one is also called a gem studded puffball because of all the little spikes on the outside. These are edible when they are fresh before any sporing has happened. I soak them in salt water for a while then peel off the outer skin before cooking them.

Here we have some young orange mycena aka Mycena leaiana. I found lots of these growing in the driftless area of Wisconsin on an early fall camping trip.

Orange mycena eventually matures into this. If you cut the gills they also bleed an orangy liquid. Too bad these aren't edible I found lots of them.

At least the slugs enjoyed them lol.

In 2019 I found plenty of earthstars. These are an egg-like puffball that starts out as an egg then blooms like a flower revealing its puffball center. I find most of these along bark paths. These ones aren't edible but are pretty cool looking.

Here is the only bicolor bolete I was able to find all of 2019. These are edible if cooked thoroughly. If they aren't fully cooked you can get a stomache ache. 2019 seemed to be a bad year for these guys, one year they seemed to grow everywhere.

Here are some deadly galerina honey mushrooms. I found these in Wisconsin last fall. If you eat these the poison slowly shuts down your organs so beware. These can be confused with other honey mushrooms or even winter enokitake mushrooms. The ring around the stem is one of the identifying factors as well as rusty spores if you do a spore print.

Here is what edible winter mushrooms look like. Notice no ring around the stem and a darker orange color. I always do a spore print before eating these if the spores are white then these are edible enokitake. But if they are rust they might be deadly galerina. Its best to avoid all rusty spored mushrooms in general lol.

Here is a baby dryad's saddle aka polypore squamosis. These are a good edible when they are young and firm. If they grow out too much they become like a tough sponge, too chewy to eat.

These dryad's are too old to eat, they get huge.

In 2019 I found lots of eyelash cup fungi. All the previous years I have never seen it growing.

I also found this unidentified ramaria fungi. Its a type of coral fungi that i have never seen before. Who knows if it is edible...

Here's a big batch of dog vomit slime mold. This can be seen in the summer when it rains. Its really gooey and gardeners hate it when it overtakes their mulch.

2019 was a plentiful year for summer oysters. I had many meals from all the ones I found.

It was easy to fill my hat each time I went out hunting for them.

Here's some poisonous pholiota, I forget the full latin name. Some mushrooms in the pholiota family are edible but these thorny looking ones are slightly toxic.

In 2019 I also found my first witch's hat aka Hygrocybe conica. This was a really bright mushroom on the forest floor.

Here's a baby lion's mane. I'm growing some from a kit at home right now. I've only found them a couple times in the wild.

Here's some glow in the dark honey mushrooms. These cause the phenomena called foxfire. If there are enough of these out in the forest on a dark night you can see them glowing.

Here's a strange black earth tongue. Lots of these were out in 2019.

Here's a chicken of the woods. In 2019 I discovered there are a few subspecies of these sulphur shelf mushrooms. The general latin name is Laetiporus sulphureus. This particular one was extra crinkly.

Here is a different chicken of the woods that is more fan shaped.

Here's a ramaria coral fungi. This one almost looks like crown tipped fungi, one of my favorite edibles but it lacks the crowns on top. I read that these ground growing ramaria can cause stomache aches if eaten so I avoided harvesting it.

Here's what crown tipped coral looks like. It always grows out of dead logs and has little crowns on the end of each stalk. Welp I've blathered on enough about my 2019 mushroom finds happy #fungifriday :-)

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