There was a terrible drought and heat wave last summer (2012), I didn't bother hiking at all for nearly 3 months (no precipitation = no mushrooms to speak of), then there was some rain in early fall and some nice fall mushrooms did show up, but I had lost my blogging momentum. Now I’m trying to catch up so I can start posting this year’s spring finds! More pics, less talk!
,Pretty sure the young cream-colored one is Agaricus placomyces. The big wildly-cracked one might be A. placomyces, too, but it's too deteriorated for me to tell. All I know is it's cool.
 | That’s some ring! The rings on mushroom stems are from a sheet of tissue that used to cover the gills in the developing mushroom (a “partial veil,” they call it). As the cap expands, that sheet of tissue tears away from the edge of the cap, and stays attached to the stem. |
I found an area that had a lot of this next stuff--Spongipellis pachyodon. First I found it on this log, and then I found it all over a tree on the other side of the trail.
 | Here’s how big it was. |
Whoa!
This is the non-boring version; apparently it can also be just a toothless crusty patch.
 | Right across the trail, it was different again, but the flat teeth, just like on the log version, gave it away. Please hold for teeth. |
Pretty great shapes…
 | At the base of the tree I found very young growths. Here is one eating a leaf. |
Just thought I’d toss some color in here, since all the other pics in this post are beige. This was a little mushroom, maybe 2” tall, and I should know what it is as it’s quite common, but I forget. But what about all that fuzz at the base of the stem? That is normal. ***Edit, two years later (10/10/2015): it's Marasmius sullivantii.
I was going for some shots of that reddish stuff which is a favorite slime mold, when this millipede showed up. I didn't realize it was actually a mating pair! They wouldn't stop rolling along on their million legs, and it was quite a dark little corner so I couldn't get a really good shot. But, “Seen millipedes mating: check.”
 | That bright white ball dead center is a puffball, Lycoperdon pulcherrimum. My shoe for size reference. |
An older specimen, spines wearing off.
 | This seemingly undifferentiated mess on a rock had me stymied for a year. During dry times it was leathery and hardly noticeable. After a good rain, things got weird. |
It’s a jelly lichen!
I didn't even know such a thing existed. My knowledge of mosses and lichens is slim to none, so this really didn't compute. Finally I posted it in the right place and some helpful soul piped up and offered some possibilities. It’s either Collema or Leptogium, that much is sure. I started looking both these up trying to
narrow it down and got hopelessly confused, so I quit.
I feel better knowing at least a little something about it.
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