Friday, August 06, 2010

fungus on the brain

Just for fun, here are some other mushrooms we've found recently and were able to identify. These were not for eating but interesting to look at and included Amanita muscaria (fly agaric):



Gomphus floccosus
("Scaly vase chanterelle" which, despite it's name and appealing appearance, isn't recommended for eating):





and Pholiota squarrosa ("scaly pholiota"):





One thing about keying-out species that you're pretty sure aren't edible or that you aren't interested in eating is that the process of going through identifying characteristics and figuring out exactly what you're looking at makes identifying the edibles a lot easier and more certain. That said, we still run into lots of fungi that we can't figure out.

6 comments:

Holly Heyser said...

Love the scaly ones!

Me, I'm confident with morels, and pretty confident with porcini, but that's about it for now.

mdmnm said...

NorCal- They are pretty, aren't they?

We're in about the same place you are, ID wise, and spend lots of time poring over field guides.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Do we have a meme going here?

mdmnm said...

Chas-

Looks like! Those that you all found are a bit more developed and open. Were the scales on the stems still prominent?

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook said...

You can eat amanita muscaria. You need to boil them and toss the water at least once, maybe twice. They then pickle them in Puglia. Seriously. You can look it up.

mdmnm said...

Hank,

I've read a little about pickling amanitas, but, pretty as they are, I don't think I'll try it until I've got a lot more experience with other mushrooms that require less processing.