Coral Tooth

Today's mushroom is another one of the edibles Jessie and I found on our first mushroom hike. It was getting toward the end of the hike and we had already picked a basket full of interesting mushrooms. Then, someone found a large, white coral reef-looking thing on the side of a large dead tree. I'd seen these before, but it had never occurred to me that they were anything interesting. Our guide told us it was the Coral Tooth (Hericium coralloides), and was great to eat. Jessie was intrigued, and set out to find one. She found one after only a few minutes of looking. It is a yellowish to white fungus, with teeth that point downward, much like the Hedgehog. I thought that it tasted like crab meat, and although it was a challenge to clean, it's one of the mushrooms I'm looking forward to collecting this fall.