Mushroom Season

Last week I posted a photo of some mushrooms we saw on our excursion to Matheson Lake Regional Park. We went there for the the express purpose of seeing some mushrooms and we weren't disappointed. We must have seen more than a dozen different varieties, including a little clump of Amanita muscaria, a mushroom I have not seen before though I have long wanted to. Unfortunately the Amanitas were all in sad states of decay and being near the trail's edge were mostly tattered and broken so I will not post any photos of them and encourage you to click their name above and see the many excellent photos of them on Wikipedia. I don't know the name of the cluster of ghostly white mushrooms pictured above. I'm still working on how best to identify mushrooms. One of the identifying features of mushrooms is the spore print but to get one you have to pick the mushroom and I am reluctant to do that so I may continue to appreciate mushrooms anonymously....

Crypsis

Crypsis (my new word for the day) means hiding and is used to refer to the camouflage employed by certain plants and animals to avoid predation by blending into the background. It might seem hard to apply this to the outstanding mushroom above but I will only mention that it is one a clump of about 75 big fat mushrooms that have been growing in plain sight for some time only a few steps off the West Bay Walkway. Despite my eagle-eyed pursuit of fungi, these guys passed unnoticed for a week or more because they are precisely the same color as autumn's fallen leaves and their clump, at a glance from above, just looks like a pile of leaves.

Mushrooms

I decided that rather than share my lame guesses as to the id of the various mushrooms I encounter I will just leave them nameless until I locate a good, easy-to-use field guide and can feel a little more confident of my identification. This group was one of several having a slow feast on a huge fallen tree out at Thetis Lake Regional Park.

Mycena Genus

I spent some time yesterday looking for a field guide for fungi, unsuccessfully. This morning I decided to see what resources are available online. I finally settled on a database program called "Matchmaker: Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest." Fumbling my way through that I came up with a tentative id for the above mushrooms as members of the genus Mycena. I Googled that and checked out the images until I found one that matched and decided to call it quits for this time around. I suspect my identification of fungi will never be more than approximate or hopeful. There are many, many different kinds and often, precise identification involves spore prints and other activities that I prefer to avoid. That, however, is not going to stop me from mushrooming (defined by Mykoweb as "the pursuit of mushrooms") and continuing to try to identify what I find. I will welcome any suggestions.

Crème Brulée

Maybe I'm just hungry this morning but the cap of this mushroom looks to me like some kind of delicious little cake topped with crème brulée or maybe carmelized sugar or... maybe crème brulée drizzled with carmelized sugar. (This probably means it's time to crawl directly to the emergency sugar stash....)

Trio

Like I said a few days ago, it's mushroom season.

Mmmmmmm

Selective Focus

One way to deal with the overwhelming biomass of the rain forest is to focus down. As usual, I always try to get everything into one picture and I really have to think in order to stop and look at the distinct parts that make up the big picture. Above, instead of everything (see yesterday's pics), I managed to get it down to two items, mushrooms and moss. This is much more peaceful.

Mushrooms

A bit of summer crept through the bleak and stormy weather we've been having so I took the opportunity for a walk in Mount Douglas Park to see what the rains and cool weather have brought out of the ground. Everything was very lush and I saw some nice flowers but I'll start with a couple of shots of some mushrooms I encountered. I don't know what genus or species these mushrooms are so if there are any mycophiles amongst my readers I hope you will take a shot at identifying them.

Mushroom Time

Was wandering in the forest with some good company on Sunday looking for some of these guys without any luck. Then today, on the way home from the supermarket, I saw this mushroom just popped up on my neighbor's lawn. Autumn is definitely here.