Mushroom Monday -

Here are a few more finds for this #mushroommonday

Look at these brown amanitas. This pair shows me both a young version and an older version.

They are fairly large as well, the cap is roughly the size of the palm of my hand.

Here you can see the ring on the stem of this amanita as well as what is left of the veil on the cap as tiny little white speckles.

Amanita also have nice symmetrical gills that don't attach to the stem.

As they get older they tend to form a goblet or wrinkled shape like this, they often collect rain water in this and sometimes the psychoactive compounds can be absorbed in the rain water. I wouldn't recommend drinking any of it lol.

Amanitas tend to grow from an egg shape and as they hatch out of the eggs the little veil pieces get left on the cap. Given that this one is brown and shares all the features of most amanitas I suspect this one might be Amanita patherina aka panther cap. This one is quite psychoactive and pretty dangerous if ingested, it will case foaming of the mouth and repetitive motions and seizures along with distorted vision and hallucinations. Best not eat one of these things as people have been described repeating dangerous motions like banging their head into the ground or repeatedly falling and getting back up again, when the psychoactive compound finally wears off they are all beat up.

Now for a white bolete trio with some tiny ones growing to the left. At first glance I thought this might be a white king bolete aka Boletus barrowsii.

I picked one of the caps and bruised the porous gills and there was no staining, this is a good sign.

Then I pinched a piece off the cap to see if the flesh stained, still no staining another good sign of the white king bolete... But after a tiny taste test nibble I got the bitter rubbery fish taste of a bitter bolete, womp :-(. As it turns out this is the pale bitter bolete aka Tylopilus rhoadsiae. Technically it is edible and not toxic but it tastes so horrible no one would consider eating it. I've read that people pickle it and it becomes kind of edible if you like bitter things but how many people like bitter pickled things out there lol. Too bad no white king boletes this time...

Here is a strange find. This looks like some mangled red bolete that is covered in the fungi known as the bolete eater aka Hypomyces chrysospermus. Right now it is in the white phase, but as it gets older it will turn yellow and slimy. I've encountered some nice edible bicolor boletes covered in this stuff which makes them inedible. Who knows what poor bolete got infected by this...

That's all for now, more mushrooms soon. Happy #mushroommonday :-)