Fungi Friday - Still No Morels but Some Edible Exist

Here are some fungi finds for #fungifriday by @ewkaw

The wild flowers are finally coming out but still no morels have shown themselves.

The wood ear was out. This stuff is pretty easy to find all year around after a bit of rain. If you know where it grows just keep checking back in the same place after a rain and it will probably be there.

The usual early spring mica caps are out as well. What is interesting about this is the green leaves in the middle are actually edible as well. It's called garlic mustard and can be harvested at this young age to make pesto or other spinach type of dishes. The mica caps are edible as well but I generally don't harvest them because they are bland and disintegrate when you cook them.

Another edible plant has appeared. These are wild chives that are kind of like a mix between onion and garlic for taste.

I like to harvest a bit then chop it up and put it on a sourdough pancake. With this pancake you can make a nice tasty pita with some meat or put some hummus on it. The chives bring a nice spicy garlic taste to the overall mix.

Here is a weird unidentified polypore. I've seen these growing only on thin broken branches. Who knows if I will ever find the identification for this.

Just another typical artists conk.

With a shot of the underside.

I revisited the conk on conk mushroom formation. The vertical surface all the smaller polypores are growing on is a really huge polypore. I imagine that the tree fell over with the huge conk on it then the mushroom decided to keep growing parallel to the ground by forming tinier shelves on its surface. My guess is that these are red-belted polypores.

Here is a strange crust fungi. It almost resembles something in a coral reef. My guess is this is Hydnochaete olivacea also known as toothed oak crust.

I found my first slug of the year eating some Stereum hirsutum.

This is often called Tremella's lunchbox as tremella fungi likes to grow on this. Examples of tremella include witch's butter or white jelly fungus.

Now for some lichens. These are abundant on all the broken branches in the forest.

Slugs seem to like this sort of salad to eat. The name of this lichen is Physcia aipolia. It belongs to a family of 73 different forms that all look somewhat similar with the green body and brownish cups. Given it is so common around here I looked up any medicinal or edible uses for this lichen but found none. Maybe no one has studied it for medicinal properties...

Anyway hopefully soon I will be posting some nice morel pictures but this week it was still too cold with not enough rain to cause them to come out yet. Happy #fungifriday :-)