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.