Friday, January 4, 2013

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.
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!

at

7 comments:

  1. Stefan JanssonJanuary 4, 2013 at 10:07 AM

    Never seen anything like that in my neck of the woods.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 4, 2013 at 10:50 AM

    Hi Benjamin,
    It looks like you've found a lovely specimen of Pseudohydnum gelatinosum. Common names are Jelly False Tooth and False Hydnum. It's an edible species but if I remember correctly has very little flavour.

    Ken Meadows

    ReplyDelete
  3. JoJoJanuary 4, 2013 at 12:04 PM

    Ooo that's really bizarre! Fungus, as a whole, bums me out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. William KendallJanuary 4, 2013 at 2:28 PM

    It certainly looks like an icicle, particularly in the thumbnail.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Benjamin MadisonJanuary 4, 2013 at 4:52 PM

    JoJo, Learn to love fungi! William K. - yes they really look icy.
    Ken Meadows - thank you very much for putting a name to this wonderful little fungus.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Benjamin MadisonJanuary 4, 2013 at 4:54 PM

    Stefan - from what I can read on this mushroom they are native to the western coast of North America.

    ReplyDelete
  7. StephanieJanuary 4, 2013 at 8:10 PM

    What an unusual looking mushroom. Love the closeup of the moss greenery.

    ReplyDelete

Greetings!
I hope you will leave a comment and visit these pages again. Should you wish to contact me directly you can use the email address in the rightmost column of each blog page.Due to increasing amounts of spam comments (it's up to about 200 per day now) I have decided to limit comments from anonymous visitors.