The fungi is starting to get sparse as the weather gets colder here for this #mushroommonday
Look at this huge pumpkin sized mushroom. Just kidding it is really just a pumpkin that was extra deformed looking. It kind of reminds me of a large cauliflower mushroom aka Sparassis brevipes but sadly it is just a leftover home depot pumpkin no one wanted to buy just before Halloween, womp.
One of the few mushroom I did see is some root rot of most likely in the ganoderma family. It will eventually harden and get reddish with a shiny surface. I saw this in my neighbor's yard so they will probably have to cut down their tree eventually as it has root rot, don't want the thing falling into their house or their neighbor's house...
Here is what looks like turkeytail at first glance but I see a slight hint of purple at the edges.
I picked one and flipped it over and saw the purple more clearly. This is violet-toothed polypore after all instead of turkeytail. It is listed as inedible but I wonder if it has some medicinal properties like turkeytail? So far I haven't found any info on its medicinal properties.
Here is false turkeytail aka Stereum ostrea. One of the easy ways to see it is false from a distance is you can see how it curls upwards and generally is thinner than turkeytail.
Whew, finally I found some real turkeytail in a younger state. Real turkeytail tends to be more dense when it grows and it also is a bit more crinkly than its false lookalikes.
Now that the weather is turning, it looks like the only fungi I'll be able to find will be crust fungi like this that grows slowly all year. This stuff kind of looks like Hyphodontia sambuci but there are also quite a few corticoid fungi that look similar.
It seems I have missed the pear shaped puffballs this year. They are already sporing out as you can see the little hole where the spores burst out. These can be kind of fun to pinch and see all the spore smoke coming out of them. Just be careful not to breath in the spores.
So far this outing has been kind of fruitless for fungi finds. At least the coyote is finding something with seeds in it to eat lol. I wonder what sort of fruit those pits came from. Coyotes are quite successful at scavenging anything to eat especially baby rabbits but they mostly will eat gourds and other tree fruits for most of the year.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)
