Here are some slimy mushrooms for #fungifriday by @ewkaw
It finally started raining here "April showers bring May flowers". The wood ear on this dead alder started expanding from all the rain.
I went out last week looking for mushrooms and found this dried up amber jelly roll.
Then yesterday after the rain I went to the same brand and now look at the amber jelly roll.
It absorbs water quickly and starts puffing up into weird shapes.
I decided to squish around in the mud looking for enough amber jelly roll to collect enough for a meal, probably for menudo soup.
I also found exidia glandulosa aka black jelly roll. This is also edible but it grows in smaller batches and sticks close to the branch making it harder to harvest. I typically don't harvest this.
At the end of the foray this was my batch of wood ear and amber jelly roll. Plenty for a good pot of soup. These are bland and tasteless mushrooms so I soak them in lemon and lime juice with salt and spices to add flavor.
Look at these tiny little mushrooms. These ones are almost as small as those tiny acorn mushrooms I found last year.
I peeled one off for scale, very tiny. This should be pretty difficult to identify.
Look at these weird mushrooms. I thought they might be something new and strange.
But when I flipped over the branch it turned out to be a turkey tail, just growing in a weird formation.
I found a different looking turkey tail type of mushroom. I'm not sure it's turkey tail though.
When I flipped it over it had a sort of magenta looking carpet texture to it.
I found some other ones nearby growing in a conglomerate formation. Maybe its a type of crust fungi, who knows...
Every now and then you find other weird things in the forest... I found this 1976 nickel stuck into the hollow of a tree branch... Maybe this is some sort of superstitious ritual someone performed out in the forest lol. I left the coin where it was.
😲 The tiny ones - miniatures 🤩
It should be quite an effort to discover their true identity. Might have to find someone with a degree in mycology. Who knows maybe they have the cure for cancer in them or some other grand thing we haven't discovered yet lol.
You will think about that also and be awaken from your sleep with the idea or the name of those small mini ones :D Who knows, maybe you already came across with the name of them, somewhere :)
Now I want to find that branch again and put my good macro lens on it.
Hope that they will wait for you! :)
Wow.
You are back to displaying beautiful and unique mushrooms.
I was even more excited to find beautiful and different mushrooms.
Your image is also very perfect.
Thank you for sharing the beauty of mushrooms.
The heavy rains have brought them out again, still no prize morels are out yet though...
Yeah.
It has started raining at our place in recent days.
Maybe later there will also grow beautiful mushrooms.
I can't wait to take their pictures.
When it rains heavy I usually go out the next morning looking for new mushrooms.
Yeah.
because at that time the fungus was seen growing.
For the ones with the magenta hue on the underside, they could be either Trichaptum abietinum (https://www.mushroomexpert.com/trichaptum_abietinum.html) or Trichaptum biforme (https://www.mushroomexpert.com/trichaptum_biforme.html). They are practically identical looking species, but you can tell them apart based on whether they are growing on dead conifer wood (T. abietinum) or dead hardwood (T. biforme).
Aha they are most likely Trichaptum biforme since they were growing on hardwood. I always thought they were a weird turkey tail. Who knows if they have the same medicinal qualities (probably not).
There are a few other common turkeytail look-alikes you will probably come across in Illinois as well. Stereum ostrea, whose common English name is "False turkeytail," is fairly common in the area.
Oh yeah I know stereum well, it tends to be thinner and bends upward but still has a variety of interesting colors. Are the morels out yet in your area. So far none have sprouted down here yet.
Nope, not yet. Just got back from another hunt. Didn't find any morels but got plenty of pictures of some other fungi and some birds, so I didn't leave empty-handed.
Been raining all weekend here so hopefully that triggers them finally.
They look really beautiful and attractive especially those little mushrooms (little acorn mushrooms) look really cool.
Someday I'll figure out what they are... Who knows maybe they are edible lol. Just not enough to really eat at all.
A really exotic collection...keep it up...
And the little ones are just wooooow
I have to bring a proper macro lens back to the place where I found them. It might be tricky finding the branch they were on though lol. But I have a good memory of the forest.
Well then I'm excited for this post😉
Trick is finding them again... my mushroom radar is pretty strong though.
Well then good luck