Peak of the Week: Making Room for Schrooms

Gabriel Leete makes room for mushrooms in autumn.

The Shasta Cascade color spotter enjoys searching the woods for edible and otherwise fascinating mushrooms.

He sends back these images taken this week near Anderson. Recent rains have helped encourage mushroom hunting in the Shasta Cascade, which we declare to be Peak of the Week.

Gabriel writes (drawing text from Wikipedia searches for his descriptions) that the Pluteus are wood-decomposing saprobes with gills that are free from the stem and pink spore prints. These were found growing upon wood chips.

Bolbitius titubans, also known as Bolbitius vitellinus, is a widespread specie of inedible mushroom found in American and Europe.  It grows primarily on dung or heavily fertilized soil, sometimes on grass.

Ink cap (Coprinus lagopus) is a specie of fungus in the family Psathyrellaceae. It is a delicate and short-lived fungus, the fruit bodies lasting only a few hours before dissolving into a black ink – a process called deliquescence.

Armillaria mellea, commonly known as honey fungus, is a basidiomycete fungus in the genus Armillaria. It is a plant pathogen and part of a cryptic species complex of closely related and morphologically similar species.

Deadly Galerina is exactly as described… it is poisonous. Galerina marginata is a specie of poisonous mushroom in the family Hymenogatraceae of the order Agaricales. The specie is a classic “little brown mushroom“—a catchall category that includes all small to medium-sized, hard-to-identify brownish mushrooms, and may be easily confused with several edible species.

False turkey tail looks like one, doesn’t it?  That’s because of the concentric circles of many colors seen on the Stereum ostrea specie. This variety is a wood decay fungus that grows on tree bark. Native to North America, it grows year round.

Caution: do not eat wild mushrooms, unless you are expert at identifying them, as many poisonous varieties resemble their edible cousins.

Mushroom Hunting, Shasta Cascade – Peak (75-100%) GO NOW!

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