mushrooms – Page 4 – recycled paper clips

Mower’s Mushroom: Official Fungus of the American Dream.

We’ve probably all seen this mushroom at one point or another. It’s something like the squirrel of the fungal kingdom. Ubiquitous. Suburban. I almost want to say “American.” The kind of mushroom you might encounter at a Memorial day bbq. Grass, ants, hot dogs…and Panaeolus foenisecii. Mycologically, what are its distinctive characteristics? Perhaps the mostContinue reading “Mower’s Mushroom: Official Fungus of the American Dream.”

How to ID a Mushroom

Ok, you’ve spotted it, growing there a couple yards off the path: now what? Well, first look up and see what’s growing around it. In this case, we’ve got a pretty mixed hardwood forest, oaks, hickories and tulips. Is it growing on wood? No, it’s terrestrial, this means we probably have a mycorrhizal mushroom (meaningContinue reading “How to ID a Mushroom”

Nature the Bizarre

Today I’m going to show you some of the stranger things I’ve found hiking. Starting below, with some kind of coral fungus I haven’t managed to quite identify. I’ve seen this several times now, usually while poking around for signs of morels. The fungus above has become lichenized, which results in the green tint. AllContinue reading “Nature the Bizarre”

Early Spring Photos: Indiana

And now for an embarrassing story…the “corn flake mushroom,” as I called it in my head, turns out to be, after months of frustrating research (well, really just hours over the course of a couple months) the extremely common… Crowded Parchment Fungus, considered by mushroomexpert.com to be “the most common, ubiquitous, ever-present, lost-all-luster fungus amongContinue reading “Early Spring Photos: Indiana”

What’s up with this beech tree?

This time of year beech trees really stick out because for whatever reason, though their leaves die and turn a beautiful translucent brown, many of them remain on the tree, creating a sort of ghostly afterimage of the full grown summer plant. Like this: When I took a closer look at some beech trees onContinue reading “What’s up with this beech tree?”