Mushroom Monday - Obscure Finds

Here are a few obscure species finds for this #mushroommonday

When there are wet fallen leaves on the ground these strange looking jelly club fungi will often be growing under the leaves. This makes them hard to find so every now and then when the weather is right I will scrape around the leaves in hopes of finding these somewhat rare mushrooms. I have yet to find the orange ones or the blue and green ones.

Here is an earth fan with a Latin name of Thelephora penicillata. These are somewhat rare to find as they also tend to grow under leaf litter. So far there is no culinary or medicinal use for them but they are a bit strange to find.

Here is another species of earth fan called Thelephora caryophyllea. This one is even harder to find because they have the same color as the earth and leaves they grow under. The only reason I found them was I felt something give under my feet and moved the leaves around and found them. Surprisingly they have a pretty tough texture to them and deep roots.

I believe these might be older Mycena leaiana, they are somewhat common in fall on deadwood. There is a possibility these might be something different though as they have a strange dent in the top. Older mushrooms are sometimes more difficult to ID.

Another interesting mycena mushroom is Mycena haematopus aka bleeding mycena. If you pinch the stem they will have red drops come out of them that kind of looks like blood.

Here is a strange first for me... This is definitely some kind of slime mold but I'm not sure exactly which one it is. Slime molds have all sorts of shapes and sizes and are often really drastically different in shape and color. These ones look like little cherry lolipops.

This one is pretty common but its unique for me as I finally found them in their smaller form. These are Coprinopsis variegata aka scaly ink cap. These are a mediocre edible mushroom, if you find them at this age they can be cooked in soups with a slightly radish taste to them. Whatever you do don't drink alcohol a good 10 hours before or after eating them as they will cause a stomach ache because of a compound in them that interacts with alcohol.

Out in the middle of the forest I found this log with this cryptic message written on it. Yikes who on earth could be watching... Maybe there's a squatch in these woods?!

So far this was the only thing that was watching. A standard toad that had to be captured as a matter of habit. If you see a toad it is customary to catch it while mushroom hunting as they give you good luck finding more mushrooms.

That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)