More than one too many

After three weeks of near constant rain last week was really hot. Still with couple downpours, but hot. Moisture plus warmth - perfect conditions for fungal growth.

Inspired by this post Picture Stories #153 - Funky Fungi by @jznsamuel I thought I could take some pictures of mushrooms too. Opportunity arrived this Saturday as I was going to the forest anyway to extract a nice rock I spotted a week before (why I go rock hunting to the woods is another story :o) ).

My intention was to take picture of any fungi I could find along the way. I know there are edible ones in this forest, but I assumed locals picked them all up already - they get up at 5am and get back home with full buckets of mushrooms after 2-3 hours and I started near 10am - way too late.

Polypores


Some other tree eating mushrooms


This weird specimen

Don't ask me what these are, I'm only interested in mushrooms I intend to eat :o)



There were many others but not all looked nice enough to be worth posting here.

And then I found these:

Mushrooms have this nice feature, that when you find one, there is usually more nearby - if they cooperate with specific trees you can expect them along the roots, if they just find nutrients in the ground they can form fairy rings. I started walking around. Oh boy! That was a mistake. After several seconds I felt bites - big ants decided chewing on my boots was not enough and they moved up my legs. I realized I'm standing in the middle of the ant super-highway and the colony is only two meters away. Thankfully the soldiers trying to fend off my intrusion were not hellbent to kill me and once I run away I could expedite them with not much effort.

Not far away I walked into very dense young hornbeam woodlet. This is the first picture I took there:

How many leccinum griseum (does it not have any normal English name?) can you spot in this picture? How about this one? :o)

There is some primal hunter-gatherer call when I see so many stuff to pick. I ended up with a bag full of mushrooms moving only several meters. Of course I have not reached my intended destination before I had to go back home.

Sadly, picking up is the only fun part of the work; cleaning, cutting and preparing to dry - not so much. And I still had to go back for my rock.

Next time I had to choose the way around, actively avoiding any places where mushrooms might grow. I picked up the rock but on my way back, even though I still tried to follow used paths, I found some more of the same mushrooms, some early larch boletes

and plenty of lurid boletes. The latter, while technically edible, can cause some problems when not cooked enough, so I leave them, especially considering there was so many mushrooms without questionable toxicity. They look really nice though.

The season for mushrooms barely started so I think there will be more opportunities to catch some nice photos of various fungi.