Fungi Friday - Baby Mushrooms & Tiny Mushrooms

Here are some tiny little baby mushrooms for #fungifriday by @ewkaw I was reminded about all these tiny mushrooms from the campfire conversation by @bambuka

Here are some really tiny unidentified mushrooms.

The only reason I noticed them was because I wanted to take pictures of the moss.

Here are some baby mushrooms. These are octopus stinkhorn eggs.

The next day I went back and found one had hatched.

Here are some tiny pear shaped puffballs aka Apioperdon pyriforme.

I picked one of the smaller ones to judge scale against my thumbnail. These tend to get up to three times this size fully grown.

Here are some tiny Scleroderma citrinum aka pigskin poison puffballs. These guys aren't edible and have a black interior compared to other edible puffballs that have a white interior.

Here is one of the few shaggy manes I've found. A tiny one just starting out, it even has the skin on top still.

Here is a good one to look for in early spring. These are baby mica caps that are technically edible but they are pretty bland and are only good in soups.

Here are some scaly ink caps aka Coprinopsis variegata. At this age they smell like a radish and this is also the best time to harvest them. These are a bit dangerous to eat as you have to avoid drinking alcohol after eating them for a few days otherwise a chemical reaction will occur and give you a stomach ache. You also need to make sure they are growing in a non-polluted area since they can absorb heavy metals.

Now for some home grown baby mushrooms. These are my blue oysters just pinning.

Sadly I have not mastered the art of growing blue oysters, these are already looking spindly as they don't have enough air/light.

These are my pink oyster mushrooms just starting to pin. I wish this is what my blue oysters would look like when they are pinning. Pink oysters are much easier to grow and are a really good beginner mushroom to start out with as they will grow in almost any indoor environment with minimal care.

Here are some wild baby summer oyster mushrooms. These are easy to find after a summer rain on fallen dead trees.

Here are some more wild baby oysters. These are brown oysters, they differ from the white oysters mainly in the stem. White oyster mushroom stems are tough and inedible but brown oyster mushroom stems are soft and the whole mushroom can be eaten.

Now for some store bought stunted tiny mushrooms. These are golden enoki mushrooms.

These are really tasty and are the domesticated version of flammulina velutipes (winter mushrooms). The domesticated ones are starved of air and grown in a high CO2 environment to stunt their cap size and make long stems similar to the texture of a noodle. To make the golden enoki the farmer has to expose them to air after growing them to a certain height. I find these also have a richer taste than the white enoki mushrooms. These are awesome in hot pot soup.

Here's what the white enoki mushrooms look like. They have even longer stems.

This is what wild enoki mushrooms look like, sadly this is a dried out example but you can see why they call them flammulina as their color is bright orange and reddish brown like a flame.

Finally we end with a tiny mushroom that I have not identified. I don't even know how I accidentally spotted these tiny mushrooms in the first place (probably trying to catch a toad).

Happy #fungifriday