Moving my posts

Hello


I have been making most of my posts on the local mushroom club site. If you need to get a login send me an email at kevinsub@yahoo.com. Please explain who you are and why you need access. The link is http://idahomushrooms.blogspot.com/

Kevin

100 morels

I went out to the greenbelt tonight and found over 100 morels. I think these are still Black Morels but they are fairly blond because they live under Cottonwood trees. There were a lot more up since I was there last week. Take a look at the photos. Click on the picture to get a closeup.

Hello this is Kevin. I went out tonight after work looking to see what has come up. I found 3 new little morels in my yard before I headed to the greenbelt. I am taking pictures of the morels in the yard everyday to see how much they grow in a day. On the green belt Jaz our dog and I found as many morels as we did ticks. I am still picking them out of her fur. I must have found 15 on my pant legs. I ended up finding two clusters of morels under two different trees. They are very hard to see. They are very blond and much lighter then the ones in my yard. I didn't pick any in hopes that they will grow in this warm weather. I counted 26 in all. After locating these I went to another spot where there is an interesting mushroom crop. Bob Chehey spent a lot of time researching them and he thinks they are Agaricus bisporus. It seems that we haven't reported them in Idaho before. They have been reported in Ca. and Wa. I have found a huge crop of them. I have collected several and may try them in the morning. I talked about them at the meeting. Take a look at the pictures. The ones I took photos of are overripe. The fresh ones have pinkish gills. Click on the photo for a better image.

Texas Gold

Hello this is Kevin Sublett. I recently got a new job and was sent to Austin Texas for the first 3 weeks of January. The first couple of days seemed really promising for some mushroom hunting with the daytime highs in the low 60s. Before the end of the week a major cold front came in and dropped the temperature to what they were claiming to be the coldest cold snap in 20 years. There were reports of temps in the 15-18 degree range in the surrounding area. I went off to the woods to look even though most things would have been freeze damaged. What I found is that there aren't many public wooded areas. Anything that looked promising had a fence and was private. Texans are very protective of their private property. We are very lucky in Idaho to have so much public land and many very nice parks. I did find some parks but always had to pay to enter. There were rules of no picking or collecting any type of flower or mushroom. I ended up doing the best at my first cousins land about 30 miles from Austin around the town of Bastrop. This area is very different then most of the area around Austin. Most wooded areas have a lot of Oak. The area around Bastrop is called the Lost Pines. They have a pine tree that looks just like a Ponderosa Pine. The area is loaded with pines and there is a mix of oak thown in. On my long lost cousins land I found a big surprise Hericium eridaceus, Lion's Mane. We found 2 logs with several examples of it. I had found 2 other species of Hericium in Idaho this year but never the erinaceus. I was really happy. The teeth or spines are considerably longer then what I had found in Idaho. The next day I went to a local state park and found some more. All of it looked like the picture showing that it had been frozen in the recent weather. I found several other mushrooms that I have enclosed photos of some of the best items. There is rumor of a rare fall Morel fruiting in the Austin area when the weather if just right. I think that the freeze could have made the conditions ripe for the morels but I came home anyway. Kevin 2/7/2010 Click on the picture to get a better view.

The Chanterelle quest.

Some big clusters in the Columbia gorge. I don't really know what they are maybe Honey Mushrooms.

I had a couple of days free so I made a mad dash to the Oregon coast on Thursday. I stayed with Wendy's parents in Portland. I searched Friday and Saturday in a triangle area of Tillamook, Cannon Beach and Banks Or. I was able to get my fill of Chanterelles. They are still coming up but the Boletes are done from what I saw. I saw a lot of interesting mushrooms. Most of them were overripe but others were still popping up. There were lots of different species everywhere I would stop. It was raining the whole time, of course. There were plenty of areas to explore and hardly anyone else around. The areas I picked the Chanterelles in were unpicked the best that I could tell. I could see lots of old Chanterelles that had turned to mush without being picked. At one place I had really gotten into the Chanterelles and then suddenly moved out of them. I looked around to see what had changed. I had moved along a ridge into an area that all of the trees looked like a birch or some broadleaf type tree. Once I moved back into the Firs and evergreen trees I was into the mushrooms again. Most of the Boletus were way overripe. I didn't see many Kings other then down by the coast. There were a lot of them but even the buttons were buggie. Take a look at the pictures. Click on the picture to zoom in.

I think these are Clavaria purpurea found along the coast in huge numbers.

A major Russula crop in a campground.                                        Helvella lacunosa is my guess.

A soggy Boletus and a Helvella lacunosa as above.  

The Chanterelle. The last type of mushroom on my checklist for the year.           

WOW!

Correction: I think that this may be a Hericium abietis after a  little looking around. I think it doesn't have as many branches as the ramosum tends to have. In any case it was good.
Saturday I made one last trip to McCall in search of a soggy Chanterelle. The Chanterelle is the only thing on my list that I never found this year. I think I found several but they were to far gone to tell for sure. On the way up I made one stop and made a major find. I found several large logs with Hericium ramosum, also listed as Hericium coralloides, growing out of several locations per log. I only took the whitest crop and left the sections starting to yellow. I only took about 1/2 of what there was. When I got home I weighed the harvest to be over 5 pounds. The last time I found this species it was on the Boise Greenbelt. It looks like the conifers hold both  Hericium ramosum also listed as Hericium coralloides, and Hericium americanum. We had a lovely shrimp stir fry with the fresh crop. I cooked and froze the rest. I am sure Bryan P will be jealous.
Click on the photo to see the full view.

The shot on the left shows some I left because they were too yellow.

Compare the good and a bad mushrooms.

I have taken a photo of the edible Brown meadow mushrooms (Agaricus cupreobrunneus) compared to the poison yellow stainer (Agaricus xanthodermus). Look closely for the semi-hollow stipe on the meadow mushroom and the caps difference.The four on the right half of the photo are the yellow stainers. Click on the picture to look for the yellow stain or yellow foot.

Below is the yellow stainer (Agaricus xanthodermus) alone. If you rub the cap it turns yellow.

Here is a photo of what I think is a Hericium Americanum. In an earlier entry I showed what I think is a Hericium ramosum also listed as Hericium coralloides. Compare the two.

Close up.

Top view.

Log side view.