Omphalotus illudens, "Jack-o'-lantern" mushroom

Got another call from a pal on the Mushroom Hotline, this time about these orange mushrooms that show up every fall on the side of his house.

If these are a bright pumpkin orange, your monitor is calibrated right.

See the little crab spider?

These are one of the few mushrooms that chanterelles can be confused with, because of the color, and the slightly decurrent gills.

These supposedly glow in the dark, but I hear it's nothing Earth-shaking, and not easy to see. I haven't tried it yet (collecting them in a damp paper towel, then locking yourself in a pitch-dark closet and sitting there for half an hour until your eyes adjust, to see a faint green glow). I'm trying to pick my battles.

You'd have to be in a pretty big hurry to confuse them with chanterelles, but to a neophyte, it can happen easily (see link, further down). But these always grow in tight clusters, and they have true gills, and they don't have that nice sweet aroma like chanterelles (fruity, like apricots), they have a silky fibrousness to the cap surface, and they're always on wood, even if you can't see it because it's the leftover underground root of a dead, long-gone tree...just don't try to talk yourself into the ID, take your time, and maybe you won't poison yourself. Or don't start collecting and eating mushrooms until you've got somebody with some experience to hold your hand. I've been at this with a vengeance for a year now, and I'm seeing all the bonehead beginner ID mistakes I made earlier, let alone recently. So my fear has actually increased with time, as far as collecting edible mushrooms. I don't know if I'll ever move past the few I currently have on my "I ate these" list. Too scared!

But, never mind all that, just look at them! They're COOL! Whether you know their name or not!

Many Garter Snakes (don't look if you think snakes are gross)

These live in the little overgrown stone wall next to my driveway. Last year I regularly saw a few, but this year I saw an awful lot more, probably because I was checking much more often. I caught them during a mass mating frenzy (short movie I got, here), and then I just started seeing them all over the place.

Typical morning (many snakes between the stones)

Seven snakes. I think the big one is a female

An inch in front of my dumb cat's face. Pretty pugnacious little snake!

So then I had to go find out about Garter Snakes. I wondered why the heck they were breeding in early fall, with 2-3 months' gestation, meaning the babies would be born in December?  Most of the text I read said they breed in spring. But then I found something that said they sometimes breed in the fall. Then I found something that said the females can store the sperm for later, as long as years. Then I read that some males will produce female pheromones in the spring as they emerge from their winter dens, and fake out other males, who will try to mate with him, which simultaneously transfers their body heat to the faker-snake and keeps them distracted from the actual female, while he sidles on over to the real female and has his way with her.

It just goes on and on, you see a thing, you ask one innocent question, and off you go...

Owl pellet & Shrew's teeth (don't look if you think bones are gross)

Owl pellet w/ frog skull and shrew's jaw

I can't believe I didn't post this before. How did I skip this?!? We found this in early spring (while looking for mushrooms).

Okay. In case you didn't know, owls eat their prey whole (if they can), and then skip the parts they can't digest. They regurgitate it. But, never mind that part, what's cool is that you can tell what they ate, if you learn your bones (or beetles. Sometimes they eat bugs, if there's nothing better around, and you can see the wing cases etc.). Not quite sure why I think that's cool, but I do.

So, the frog skull was pretty easy (for some reason I knew what a frog skull looked like), but my mind kept wandering back to those red teeth. I didn't give it much attention at first--I just thought, "Oh, look, discolored teeth, something maybe old." But that was no rodent, so what the heck was it? Based on the size, there weren't many options (shrews, voles*, & moles).

*(Oops--voles ARE rodents)

I started to poke around, looking up God-knows-what on the Interwebs, until I finally started typing in things like "red teeth" and "skull ID" and found that there's a whole family of shrews called "Red-toothed shrews"! And their teeth are red because of iron deposits in the enamel! And the iron makes their teeth harder! Which they need because they eat so much to keep going! And they have to eat so much (their body weight every day, or up to triple that in some species) because their metabolism is insanely high! Heart rates measured at 800 beats per minute (a resting hummingbird's is 250)! And they can die from fright (being so high-strung), and they are quite stinky from some kinda scent glands they have (so, cats will kill them but rarely eat them, because they stink, but birds in general have a poor sense of smell so they don't care and will eat them), and they only live about 15 months, can have 2 to 4 litters in that time, hate all other creatures including other shrews, and are great to have around your property to keep the bug population down. All they do is eat, breed, and get mad at other shrews. And stink, I guess. Could be worse.

Oh, wait, there's also toxins in their saliva that paralyze their prey (snails, crickets, etc.) and can really swell and hurt if you get bit.

But really, other than those things, that's all.

I was just curious about the red teeth!

Laetiporus cincinnatus, for real this time

Spilling out of a tree

Laetiporus cincinnatus white pore surface

In between things

A friend called me on the Mushroom Hotline to tell me about some mushrooms growing in his yard (not these--some great Omphalotus illudens, coming soon), and I could see this in his neighbor's yard. 

My friend wasn't home yet and the neighbors weren't home either, so I couldn't ask them if I could have it, and it took a LOT of strength of will for me to not just harvest it and run. But it all worked out--I found a perfectly ripe pawpaw on the ground nearby which I DID take without asking anyone because I've had a long-running issue with pawpaws, namely, that I've heard about them and was intrigued by them and I've never seen one fruiting (I see the pretty blue-green trees in the woods all the time, with blooms) and never eaten one and people keep telling me, "Oh, they had them at the Farmers Market last week!" and I had just talked about them again two days earlier so I decided that pawpaw had my name on it, and I took it. I saw it lying there, wondered what it was, the leaves of the tree registered, the decision was made, it was in my bag. Look, know, take. That's how long it took.

When I got home I called my foodie friend down the street, and we shared it, and it was magnificent. Totally made my day.

And since then, my friend did talk to his neighbors who said I could have the Chicken with their blessing, so tomorrow I'm going back over there to take more pics of the Omphalotus and hopefully those little girls a few houses down haven't messed up the chicken too bad (they got curious when I was taking pics, and by the time I was leaving they were poking it with sticks or something).

Note: this is an atypical form of L. cincinnatus, they usually grow near the base of trees or a little distance from the tree, seemingly from the ground, but really on an underground root. And usually in a rosette pattern, not overlapping shelves like this. Several people reported atypical growths of these this year.

The title of this post is referring to the previous post where I was getting all whipped up about some mushrooms I found that I thought were Laetiporus cincinnatus. I found them when they were quite small and I was tracking them, and on the 3rd visit I harvested them, and even showed them to people at work (oh, great! now people with even less familiarity with mushrooms have been given the wrong information by someone they think knows things!), until I finally realized they weren't Chicken mushrooms at all. I was chagrined (also taken aback, also brought up short. Chicken mushrooms are supposed to be one of the easiest ones. I just need to slow down).

Anyway--how 'bout those shapes, eh?

Very young Berkeley's Polypore which in my excitement I misidentified as a Laetiporus cincinnatus

Although I've got a backlog of images of other stuff I've found in the woods recently, I found this on a hike today, and it rose to the top.

Bondarzewia berkeleyi

Growing happily amongst the poison ivy...

Chicken of the Woods! The pink kind, with white pore surface.

Four days later!

Sept. 5 update: No, no, no, it's a Berkeley's Polypore, a rookie mistake! Something about that pore surface was whispering to me, saying, "No, wait, Chicken of the Woods is SMOOTH underneath, it's not just that this one is so young..." so I started looking at ID things and lots of other pics, and although the surface could maybe pass as a Laetiporus cincinnatus, the overall shape and growth pattern just wasn't quite right, and eventually the pore surface pretty much clinched it for me. Not to mention the color, which I chalked up to it being slightly waterlogged from rain. Oh, well, it's a fine example of trying to cram the facts into what you want to see. I wanted it to be a fine fat chicken of the woods, so I overrode that little nagging feeling...

(Original Aug. 30 post) I found it 3 days ago. Now I have to keep going back to check it, because mushrooms can grow really fast, and I don't want to miss it when it's at its succulent best. Except now I'm going to lie awake at night worrying, and hoping no one else finds it. There is some small comfort in the fact that, while it was close to the path, it was on the cedar-y side, so maybe everybody else just skips that part thinking it's not worth looking there. These are growing up against a very big, very rotten oak. There was only about 15' of tree still upright. The rest was on the ground. But, perhaps I have already said too much.

Berkeley's Polypore engulfing a blade of grass

They are known for just growing around whatever's touching them. I sense no malice there, though.

Pore surface of young Bondarzewia berkeleyi

The shapes sure are incredible, this I know for sure.

Netted Rhodotus

Rhodotus palmatus

 
You can't make this stuff up.

I should have sent that image to NASA, and said, "I am an amateur astronomer. Look what I found! It was in the north-east sky."

 

These are the nice pink gills

This mushroom was in an impossible spot, at the bottom of a sort of pit of fallen logs all crammed into each other, so for the gill shot I was holding the camera at arm's-length (mine), underneath it, pointing up towards me, and aiming it in the direction I thought it should be, taking the shot and then previewing it, and doing that like 1,307 times in the sweltering heat and it was really getting dark so this is what I suppose one might call a "lucky shot." And who cares about the damn gills anyway, with a cap surface like that.

It's one of my all-time favorite mushrooms.

Quick chanterelle beauty

Young chanterelles and grapevine

This lovely composition was nicely arranged for me before I got there, I guess by faeries (photo from June 28th).

The Humble Cicada

Annual cicada, Tibicen sp.

3 ocelli

 
I've always loved those little sparkly red-jelly eye-spots. When I was little I thought they looked like lights. I still think they look like lights.

What I was really after was a good shot of the beautiful pattern on its back. It's a very elegant color combination, in a lovely and mysterious pattern.

Full frontal cicada.

I had a species name plonked on this one, after looking up "cicada" and then "annual cicada" and then "Missouri annual cicada," until I looked a little further into it, and saw that there's a whole bunch of similar ones, and then I lost interest.  

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.

Witch's Hat, Bird's Nest and Red Russula

Witch's Hat mushroom, Hygrocybe conica, sweet little thing...that little knob on top is typical.

Bird's Nest fungi (Crucibulum laeve) on old hickory shell. These are really common, yet it feels like the first time every time I see them (because I think they're so cute). The "eggs" are peridioles, or spore-sacs, and a drop of rain will cause them to shoot out of the nest, trailing a little sticky strand, and then it will stick to a leaf or something, and then the peridiole will break open, and spew spores around. At least, that's what I hear; I've never seen it (but, one day, I will). The yellow one in the foreground hasn't opened yet.

Red Russula. That white "bloom" on the ant one is dropped spores from the one above it.

White jelly fungus (and more chanterelles)

Exidia alba--synonym Ductifera pululahuana

Lots of Chanterelles

About 6” of rain in 3 days means a whole lot of mushrooms are bursting forth…there's so many chanterelles out that I was perfectly comfortable GIVING AWAY the whole bag from the last outing. Two people at work seemed interested enough, as I babbled on & on about mushrooms (like I do), that I asked them if they'd like to try some, and they said yes, with believable enthusiasm, so I picked the last batch just for them.

There's so many of them that when this woman overheard us, and came to see them, and said "Oh, that's what those are??? I just mowed a whole bunch of them down before work today!," I * did * not * even * care.

SO much nicer than the paranoia and stress involved with MORELS. Chanterelles are prolific; they show up in the same area year after year, they're really easy to spot, they're all over the place, and they keep coming up for months--they'll be around, in abundance, through the fall. I know 5 places right this second that I could take someone and we would find chanterelles. Unlike some mushrooms we know.

The little white jelly fungus is Exidia alba; it's about an inch across.

What’s so great about chanterelles

That’s a comment, not a question.

This lacy, ruffly, scalloped, swooping Baroque sculpture is the beautiful underside of a chanterelle. When I turned it over and saw this I heard music and faeries appeared.

Then I ate it

Crown-tipped coral

Artomyces pyxidatus. Or Clavicorona pyxidata, same thing. Welcome to the wacky world of mushroom taxonomy; I can’t keep up. Something to do with DNA (the mushroom’s, not mine).

Anyway, these always grow on wood, like well-rotted logs. None of this "can look like it's growing from soil but it's really on an underground root" business. They grow ON LOGS.

The little distinctive crown tips are there even on very small young ones.

Fun with lichen

Lichen on a gravestone, originally uploaded by Mycologista.

Lichen on a gravestone in Mansfield, MO.

We went to this old cemetery on the way home after several days of playing in the water on the Little Niangua. There was great lichen in wild colors growing on lots of headstones, and it was all dry as a bone, as it hadn't rained in several weeks. I can only imagine how technicolor it would be after a long, cool rainy spell...

But, now I know a good place to look for stuff. Lichen, in cemeteries.

Blue Mushroom Sap--Lactarius indigo

The Blue Milk, originally uploaded by Mycologista.

Lactarius indigo. Click on it! View it as big as you can! Do it!

Indigo Milkies

Lactarius indigo

Hollow stem and blue fingers

These have caps precisely the color of well-faded denim.
When the gills of a fresh one are damaged, marvelous indigo-blue juice oozes out (and fast!). And they're edible, and I've got four nice ones in the fridge right now. I hear they're kind of grainy or gritty. And they will turn scrambled eggs green! So, the choice is obvious.

Let the Games Begin! The Chanterelles are HERE!

Let the Games Begin!, originally uploaded by Mycologista.

The chanterelles are out!

I was on my way to checking The Field of Chanterelle Joy and found them just all over the woods, right on the little paths. Nobody home yet in The Field, though.

Curious I am to see what will happen in the field, which last September was covered with hundreds of them for a good few months. Also, it's hardly a "field"--it's covered with some plant I haven't ID'd yet, and lots of damn honeysuckle, and trees.

I cleaned and sauteed the whole lot of them, ate a LOT of them in scrambled eggs, and there's plenty left (until TOMORROW, anyway, when I'm going for another hike), and my house smells like chanterelles, which is great.

Old polypore sculpture, Ganoderma applanatum

Ganoderma applanatum, "Artist's conk"

Look, I don't make this stuff, I just find it

Here's another one







Six years after I posted this, I looked at it again, and now I think it's Ganoderma applanatum, an old one. The original post was "Fresh young polypore sculpture" and I had identified it as Ischnoderma resinosum. But now I don't remember where it was growing, and I don't have more details to refer to. I was overly eager, and fairly inexperienced. It's a phase many mushroom people go through. No shame.