Nature Walk – Name that Fungus! If you’ve been following “Late Bloomer” the last couple of weeks, you know I have fungi on the brain! (See my article “Fungi for Thanksgiving!”)
I’m drinking mushroom tea, eating mushrooms, I ordered mushroom immune defense supplements, and I even tried to get a grocer at my market to give me a garbage bag of stale portobellos today to throw on my garden.
I took a nature walk in Northern California yesterday morning to search for mushrooms to photograph. A 200 acre old-growth eucalyptus and redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains with three miles of hiking trails is part of Chaminade Resort. 60′ trees provide a thick canopy over the canyon.
You are forewarned about the poison oak alongside the trails, and I’m very allergic, so photographing delicately detailed mushrooms in the dark canyon was quite a challenge. Here are just a few fungi I came across. Please help me identify them!
The darker the forest, the paler the mushrooms.
The trail is accessible to the public, and and a local woman I walked with for a while told me that at one time Tibetan monks walked the trails. The serenity was temporarily broken by this sight.
The Villa was built in 1914, and at some points in the recent past was visited by vandals. I’ve never understood vandalism. Or littering.
I turned the corner and spotted a lone wildflower.
My serenity was broken again as a group of noisy hikers came up behind me, and as it appeared that our pace was approximately the same with me stopping to take photos, I turned, let them pass and retraced my steps. I wanted to look for a group of fungi I had photographed with my phone the day before. I found them, but the sun hadn’t.
Fungi are so ephemeral. Some of this grouping were starting to turn black and disintegrate the day before, and were blacker and harder to spot the following day.
It’s such a blessing to be able to take a walk in nature. Take nothing (but photos) and leave only your footprints. No identification required, or wanted.
Nature spontaneously keeps us well. Do not resist her! – Henry David Thoreau
Please leave a comment and help me name that fungus! And if you want to forage for mushrooms, read “Wild mushrooms: What to eat, what to avoid” – Mother Nature Network
Thanks for reading! – Kaye
