Killarney Lake Mushroom

Every year I look forward to discovering a mushroom new to me and this year our Killarney Lake excursion provided a new find, pictured above. This reddish cap with green-tinted stalk is quite unusual.

Fluted Black Elfin Saddle

On our most recent excursion to Mount Douglas Park I was happy to see a few of these weird little mushrooms with the fanciful name of Fluted Black Elfin Saddles. They really look like the perfect food for all those zombies we've been seeing lately and I understand they are probably edible despite being a little bit poisonous.

Mushrooming

It's been a couple of weeks since I last checked this year's mushroom crop so Fern and I went out to Mount Douglas Park for a few hours on Wednesday to see what has popped up out of the ground. The Coral Fungi pictured above is one of the beauties we found.

One More Mushroom

Well the cold weather has arrived early this year - it's freezing every night now and I doubt I'll see many more mushrooms popping up this year. But before I bid the season adieu, after last week's posts of weird-shaped fungi I thought I would post this mushroom-shaped mushroom. It looks good enough to eat though I have no idea whether it is edible or not.

Fluted Black Elfin Saddle (Helvella lacunosa)

Usually I avoid attempting to identify mushroms, partly because it is difficult, but also because it often involves taking specimens and I prefer to leave mushrooms, like wild flowers, where I meet them instead of uprooting them just to satisfy my curiosity. However, this mushroom is distinctive enough in appearance alone that I will venture an opinion on its identification as a Fluted Black Elfin Saddle (Helvella lacunosa). It has a rather morbid color and shape and this has set me to wondering why mushrooms differ so much in appearance. Wildflowers are generally agreed to have evolved their shapes and colors to attract pollination agents such as bees. However, I've yet to hear a rationale for any of the variations in shape and color of mushrooms.

Ongoing Mystery

I first posted a photo of this wonderful fungus in December a couple of years ago. I continue to be intrigued by this species' wonderful color and texture whenever I see one. They glow like little odd-shaped icicles among the moss. However, I am no closer to identifying them than I was two years ago so any suggestions will be appreciated.

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Site visitor Ken Meadows has kindly identified this mushroom as Pseudohydnum gelatinosum. It's also known as toothed jelly fungus, false hedgehog mushroom, and white jelly mushroom. It's edible and also may have some medicinal uses. Thanks Ken!

Mature Mushrooms

Generally I like to photograph mushrooms that look like they just popped out of the ground that morning. This is a little unrealistic since mushrooms like other living things go through stages in their development. Though the mushrooms above are clearly past their prime they still have a certain scruffy charm.

Toadstool Tuesday

I am still enjoying the fungi.

Old Man Mushroom

This was such an inconspicuous mushroom I almost stepped on it but when I looked at it more closely I realized I had never seen one before. I am calling it an Old Man Mushroom because it's covered with gray hair. My personal senior's moment these days is trying to figure out where I left my mushroom field guide....

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.

Glendale Gardens - Mushrooms

Last week I spent an afternoon at the Glendale Gardens in Saanich, about a half hour's drive from Victoria. I'm still on holiday so here's another photo from that excursion.

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.