Fungi Friday - Winter Mushrooms and some Vintage Memories

Here are some winter mushroom finds for this #fungifriday by #ewkaw

Here is a dried out batch of woodear.

These are fairly easy to find in the winter, but they tend to dry out from the cold winter air.

Here's what woodear looks like in early spring.

They are nice and plump.

Woodear is a nice medicinal edible mushroom that can be harvested and dried for use later. It doesn't have much taste but if you soak it in soy sauce with spices then dry it, it can be a good addition to ramen soup.

I find plenty of polypores during the winter as well. This is
Stereum ostrea aka false turkeytail.

False turkeytail tends to be thinner and have smooth pores underneath compared to real turkeytail.

Here is an example of true turkeytail. See how it is thicker and doesn't curl upward like the false turkeytail. I like to harvest this and boil it in tea to get vitamin d and other anticancer antitumor properties from it.

Here is an orange corticoid crust fungi sometimes called tremella lunchbox. There are no medicinal properties to this but it makes a nice orange color in the gloominess of winter.

Look at these cow patty looking mushrooms lol. These are probably really old red banded polypore mushrooms.

Here are some weird looking orange finger fungi. I'm not sure of the name but these guys are super tiny and gelatinous. Probably some kind of jelly fungi. I found these after some heavy rains in spring.

I believe this is orange peel fungi aka Aleuria aurantia.

Finally, here is a giant puffball mushroom. These come out in early fall after a good rain. Look for them in dark soil with lots of forest shade above.

That's all for now. Happy #fungifriday :-)