Fungi Friday - Summer Rain Mushroom Finds

It has been raining a lot this summer, here are some finds from this week for #fungifriday by @ewkaw

These are some kind of amanita.

The brown cap is reminiscent of a panther cap aka Amanita pantherina, but these guys have a yellow tint to them.

I found a baby one emerging next to them that is golden. So it looks like they are Amanita muscaria var. guessowii. I suspect the browning on the older specimens happened because of some direct sunlight tanning. In theory these mushrooms are hallucinogenic but they are reported to have very little of compounds that red Amanita muscaria has.

The corals have emerged with the summer rain.

They are even crawling up the side of a tree.

I'm guessing this is Ramaria formosa, a non-edible. Many species of ramaria are slightly toxic and will give you stomach aches. I only know of two edible ramaria species here. Crown tipped coral and pink tipped coral.

Here is a tragedy. This Calvatia gigantea has been stepped on by a rude person and split in half. This would have been an amazing find for a meal if it wasn't destroyed first. I often find these things stepped on, seems to be a sport around here.

Here are some sneaky dead man's fingers. They are very tiny at this age, they should double in size and start to get more gray in about a week or so.

Here is an unidentified polypore just starting out. The cool thing to note is the guttation droplets. When polypore mushrooms get too much rain they expel the excess water in droplets like this.

Here are a bunch of bird's nest fungi. Eventually the top will dry up and expose little eggs inside a cup. When it rains the droplets of water displace these eggs and they start growing elsewhere. It is almost like a fungi that produces a seed rather than a spore.

That's all for this #fungifriday more soon...