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.

Hedgehog

One of the first edible (and by edible I mean actually edible and not one that will make you sick) that I gathered was the Hedgehog. There are several different kinds of hedgehogs, but the one that I found is Hudnum Umbilicatum. The most notable feature about this mushroom is the presence of spines, rather than gills, on the underside of the cap. These 'teeth' are extremely recognizable and make this mushroom hard to mistake for anything else, a nice feature when looking at edible mushrooms.

Toxic Yellowing Agaricus

The Toxic Yellowing Agaricus is a member of the Agaricus family of mushrooms, all of which are cap and stem mushrooms with a stem ring. A stem ring is the remnant of the partial veil of the mushroom that, after having come up from under the ground, stays attached to the stem. This mushroom is found in grassy areas, parks and anyplace where there is a good deal of moisture and/or rotting plant material.

This mushroom, along with several others, are called by David Arora "the lose your lunch bunch". They are toxic, but not dangerously so. They cause moderate to severe 'gastrointestinal distress'. The reason I chose this one is that this mushroom is a case study in why amateurs should not eat mushrooms unless they are 100% sure of the identification. We found these in, of all places, our front yard. I looked up the mushroom, assumed I checked all the characteristics, and pronounced, with great satisfaction, that we had a Woods Agaricus (Agaricus sylvicola), a good eating mushroom.

Long story short, we ate a few, with Jessie eating the most. Short story very short, Jessie got sick and I didn't. Moral of the Story: Don't eat mushrooms unless you are 1000% certain of the ID.

Rosy Russula

The first (and only time) I've been on a guided mushroom hike, I expected to hike around for hours, hunched over, vainly trying to find an interesting mushroom or two. Instead, we got out of the car, started walking to the trail head, and right there, along the side of the road, was a bright red mushroom. I was excited, so I brought it to our guide, who proceeded to manhandle it to pieces. Luckily, I would find out that they are very common, at least where we were. I got over my disappointment.

The Rosy Firm Russula (Russula rosea), like all russulas, have flesh that crumbles when you break it, instead of being stringy, like most others. It's pretty short, has a convex to flattish cap and medium spaced, brittle gills. But its the red color and the crumbly flesh make this a pretty easy mushroom to identify. You can also tell it's not one of the other red russulas by the fact that it doesn't have a peppery hot taste, but that's for another day. Enjoy!

Straw-colored Fiber Head

The goal of this journal is to learn more about the mushrooms of the Pacific NW. To do this, I am going to choose one mushroom a day to learn at least a few things about. So here we go.

The first mushroom of the day (heretofore referred to as the M.O.T.D.) is the Straw Colored Fiber Head (Inocybe fastigiata). It might seem to be a fairly innocuous mushroom to begin with. It is a fairly widespread Inocybe, a member of the Cortinarious family, itself the largest family of brown spored gilled mushrooms. I chose this because while talking with Jessie about this project, she asked me which mushroom I was going to start with. She thought it would be funny if I chose this one. Not because of any particular beauty or feature associated with it, but because, like many Inocybes, it has a very specific odor. That odor being "spermatic". So there you go. I'm hoping that future entries will be slightly more illuminating.