Fungus Identification #05

Sick of fungi yet? Too bad, here is some more! Went on a short forage with Nick yesterday and this time really climbed around in the brush, bushes, and trees. Hopefully no poison oak shows up on our bodies. So far, so good!

We found two ridiculously cute mushrooms and both are smaller than my thumb!

Russula emetica - this one even has a tinier mushroom next to it!

Boletus zelleri - aka Zeller's Bolete. Strikingly beautiful little shroom.

We also found tons of these polypores devouring a fallen conifer. 

Fomitopsis pinicola - aka red-belted conk. I'm still looking for an artists conk to doodle on! See what I mean here.

These candy caps were the best find of the day! They're weren't very many, but there were enough for me to take home and dry. They smell like an earthy maple syrup when dried and they're quite tasty.

Lactarius rubidus - aka Candy Caps!

Fungus Identification #04

More fungi! This time from mid December... I give the latin name first, then the common name in quotations. I'm not 100% about everything I identify. It's hard work, but very satisfying once the identification mystery is solved.

Armillariella mellea - Honey mushrooms! A very tiny family.

Not 100% identified. I have a couple ideas though... It could be the "boring brown bolete" or the "poor mans slippery jack". Either way, both names do not give too much hope to this little mushroom. 

You can really see the tubes in this cross section (same shroom from above). Mushrooms are fascinating.

Lycoperdon foetidum - "Dark puffball". This was is very fresh; no spores yet!

Vascellum pratenise - "Field puffball". Notice the green in the middle; those are spores!

This is generally what my set up looks like when I'm working on identification. The mushroom caps are covered with a class and set on white paper so I can get a spore print. The color of the spores help me to identify what type of fungi I've found. The class help by keep the caps undisturbed, which can create vivid spore prints like the image below.

As always, more mushrooms to follow! I also have some film to share that involve love and bicycles. Hopefully I can get those edited and up next week.

Fungus Identification #03

I have quite a few identifications to put up here... this is actually from a forage in early December! I am far behind my record keeping.

Lactarius deliciosus - the delicious (actually, it's not) milky cap

Mystery Lactarius. Can't identify them all yet...

Lactarius vinaceorufescens - yellow staining milky cap

Suillus tomentosus - blue staining bolete. This image does not due the blue staining justice. All you have to do is touch underneath the cap and the pores would stain. Same for cutting the stem and cap as you can see in the image below.

Suillus pseudobrevipes? - possibly a veiled short-stemmed bolete. I'm not 100% sure on the identification. Very slimy and disgusting boletes. I did not enjoy touching these or identifying them. Very gross and snot like.

Suillus pungens? - another slimy cap but with beautiful pores. Smelled pungent like a pungent slippery jack, but I'm not 100% on this identification. The cap was a very lovely orange in the middle and forest green on the edges.

Making spore prints! I only got spores for the bottom right bolete that were a olive green. The rest were white or slime.

I spent a good amount of time on identifying these six. It was a lot of work and I had to start over multiple times for the questionable identifications. I'm getting better at this, but certainly not faster. Till next time...