Find out how you can enrich your body, mind, and environment through an appreciation for mushrooms and mycelia. Join me for a mushroom adventure!
Most people think of Italy when they think of a truffle, but there are quite a few incredible edible truffle species in North America, too. Truffles aren't much to look at, they're like small lumpy potatoes buried in the dirt. But these aromatic little fungi balls are literal forest treasures. They can be hard to find because they're always underground, but with some training and the help of a…
Finding the amethyst deceiver (Laccaria amethystina "complex") when it is young and bright purple is a treat. Unfortunately, it doesn't stay that vivid color as it gets older and is often overlooked because it is rather pale and bland-looking. Seeing a young one and an old one side by side, it is hard to believe they are the same mushroom.
Mycoremediation is the use of fungi to break down or remove pollution from soil, water, and air. It is being developed to use on petroleum, pesticides, industrial dyes, heavy metals, and a long list of other contaminants. Researchers have found that many wood-decaying fungi have the right chemical tools to break down pollutants. They work because a lot of industrial pollutants have a chemical…
If you find a mushroom with a stem covered in tiny dark bumps, as if it rolled through ground pepper, it is almost always a scaber stalk bolete (Leccinum sp.). Those bumps are called scabers (hence the common name), and no other bolete genus has the same rough, speckled look covering the entirety of the [ ]
Coral mushrooms look like something that belongs in a tide pool. The fruiting body branches upward in dense clusters of fingers and forks, like the sea coral it is named for. These corals range in color from bone white to butter yellow to bright red.
You don’t always have to go out to the forest to find a mushroom; there are tons of urban mushrooms. Mushrooms grow in many places, including mowed lawns, wood chip paths, a mulched flower bed, a potted houseplant, on trees along streets, and in public parks. Many types of mushrooms can grow within a short walk of the front door, and some of them are even edible, too.
Plums and custard (Tricholomopsis rutilans) sounds like an edible mushroom, but unfortunately it is not. It is way too bitter to be enjoyable. It is a beautiful mushroom, though, and a lot of fun to see. The cap is bright yellow and covered in a dense coat of tiny purple-red scales, and the gills underneath [ ]
A bunch of fungi species grow in some very unusual places. There are mushrooms that grow in horse dung, burned ground, the caps of other mushrooms, buried pine cones, and dead insects.
Some mushrooms change color when you press on their flesh or cut the stem or gills. The colors range all the way from blue to yellow, red, and black. The cornflower bolete turns deep blue, while the yellow stainer turns chrome yellow, and a milk cap can bleed blue or red juice from a single [ ]
Finding a mushroom that bleeds, oozes, or drips can be a little unnerving. Some look like they’re covered in drops of blood, and others like they’re leaking milk. There are mushrooms that drip amber goo down a tree trunk and mushrooms that have small dark tears along their gills.