The TRUE Field of Chanterelle Joy

This is what it’s like, in the woods right now. Kind of puts last year’s field to shame. But, I got a late start on all this (Sept. '09), so this spring and summer is all new to me.

This is actually very close to last year’s big patch that I was so excited about, but when I found that one, this area had already faded, so I didn’t know.

I know I keep going ON and ON about the dang chanterelles, but it’s just so fun to walk into the woods, and walk out 2-3 hours later with enough of these beautiful, fragrant mushrooms that I can gives bags of them to friends.

Here’s some other fun chanterelle antics:


I’ve found a bunch of these crazy ruffled ones, and so have some friends. I’m working on finding out what’s up with this; some were even more impossibly cauliflowered.

Walnut Sphinx moth

Whoa! I picked this one and this marvelous bonus Walnut Sphinx moth was on it!  It didn’t seem to care one bit that I was holding up the mushroom and moving it around for 5 minutes as I took pictures; it never moved. It was pretty big—see my fingertips.

Amorpha juglandi

Extra double wonder-bonus—they tell me the caterpillar squeaks when disturbed!!!

Green-spored Lepiota/Fairy Ring*

Young Green-spored Lepiota, veil remnants on cap

The enormous fairy ring, 10-12' across (later I read that that's not really all that big for them)

Chlorophyllum molybdites

Got another alert on the Mushroom Hotline (thank you, JS!) that this fairy ring was back--I had seen it while driving a few weeks earlier, but by the time I got there 2 days later it was mowed down. This time I went the day of the call (and I wore my cape).

Then I marched over to my next-door neighbor's house to show him a huge specimen I'd collected for a spore-print (much bigger even than the one in this photo), and he said he saw me standing in the doorway with it, and thought, "What is that, a LAMP?"  

I was pretty sure what it was, after rooting around in field guides and online, but the spore print confirmed it--green! From an all-white mushroom! To be fair, these were very freshly opened. By the time I got it home, the gills were already starting to darken with maturing spores.

Not lethal, but still poisonous, and WILL make you good and SICK. And if you're in bad shape to begin with (or just little), you could die. So, no Chlorophyllum molybdites for you!

*Many different species will grow in rings. All rings are not Green-spored Lepiotas! And all Green-spored Lepiota don't grow in rings!

Ash Tree Bolete pore surface

Ash Tree Bolete pore surface, originally uploaded by Mycologista. 

Well, this was pretty cool, since the top of this mushroom looked like icky grey liver, or worse.

Lawn liver

A friend (thank you Robbie!) called to alert me to these (I guess my non-stop ranting about mushrooms is having an effect). If the top-most image is showing up as a weird ocher-olive color, that's accurate. Also, every time I look at that first one, it looks out of focus for a second, and then it pops into focus. Wacky! This didn't happen in real life, only in photo. 

Okay. So the Latin name is Gyrodon merulioides, or Boletinellus merulioides, it's edible, or inedible because it tastes lousy (like wood. or dirt), and one person in Illinois says on their website that "This is one of the most flavorful mushrooms we can find around here." I think I'll skip this one. But I still love those pores...

Update July 24: a hard-core, long-term mushroom hunter told me he thinks they taste like rotten potato peels.