Gary showed me where these amanitas were. I think he felt bad for harvesting the beautiful King Boletus that I had planned to photograph that very morning.
Walking the dogs in the morning gives us a chance to observe nature. I’ve been itching to take my camera sans dogs and shoot some photos of the different types of mushrooms. I got my chance on Thanksgiving Day during a brief break in the rain.
If the sun hadn’t been shining, I would have walked right past these without noticing them.
I found it interesting that these little brown mushrooms grew in a circle around a Eucalyptus tree in someone’s front yard.
At first these blended in with the gravel. My wife says, “They look like gravel.” I says, “They are gravel,” and scraped them with my boot. Ooops.
Another type of mushrooms growing on old gravel road.
Chanterelles…the only type of wild mushroom we will eat, except for the King Boletus, but in my humble opinion, the Chanterelle is the best.
I
Another chanterelle. This mushroom is so tasty, if you know where to find them, you don’t usually tell anyone else. I protected my spot by harvesting all I could find.
Mushroom growing on very old tree trunk
King boletus, a few days old
You can tell how wet it’s been here.
A big bunch of mushrooms growing on a log. I wish I knew if I could eat them.
More mushrooms on a log
It’s amazing how many kinds of mushrooms there are if you just open your eyes in a wet wooded area.
- Salamander climbing over a branch
These mushrooms appeared abundantly in an area logged about a year ago.
Ironically these cultivated logs have been staring blankly at me for over two years. I don’t know how many 5/16″ holes I drilled, tapped spore plugs into, and melted a wax seal on, but it was a bunch of them…I had to keep letting the drill bit cool down.
There are Terry’s successful mushroom logs. He probably followed the directions.
A real beauty
A look at a shitaki from the top
Looks like these logs popped out a bunch of tasty mushrooms.
My daughter introduced me to Terry after meeting him and his wife at the coffee shop she worked at when she lived in the San Francisco Bay area. “Dad, this guy is into Top Bar Beekeeping AND mushroom logs.” (A rare combination, I thought.) “I’ve got to meet him.” He often sent packets of bee information to me. One of those packets contained Slovenian Beehive art. The photo of bees crawling in and out of a carved face as a front of a hive led to my Bee Beard log hive.
For more very fascinating mycelium check out the hugelkulture bed.
Terry mentioned Paul Stamets. I love the guy. Okay, I don’t really know him, but give a listen to this TED talk and you will love him too.
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 
Stunning amanitas, proper fairy ring mushrooms.
Thanks for the compliment. “fairy ring mushrooms.” Would that be the circle of mushrooms around the tree?
These are incredible! I’ve always wanted to learn more about fungi, maybe grow my own on a log someday. thank you for a lovely group of pics and commentary. Happy Thanksgiving:)
Uh…good luck with growing your own mushroom log. I added another photo of my complete lack of success along those lines. 🙂
Not great, huh? Hmmm….maybe some stuff is better left to those more expert than I.
The big bunch of mushrooms growing on the log looks like Turkey Tails, Trametes versicolor.
Turkey tail mushrooms have been used to treat various maladies for hundreds of years in Asia, Europe, and by indigenous peoples in North America. Records of turkey tail brewed as medicinal tea date from the early 15th century, during the Ming Dynasty in China. Our ancestors certainly encountered them and most likely explored their uses long before written history. Since the late 1960s, researchers in Japan have focused on how turkey tail benefits human health and how extracts of turkey tail can boost the immune system.
That’s Paul Stamets of Fungi Perfecti on the Olympic Forest in Washington.
I hear you can chew on them but I’ve only had Turkey Tail Tea.
Terry, I was wondering if those were Turkey Tail mushrooms. Thanks for your comment…it also brought to mind your terrific SUCCESS at growing mushroom logs…and my terrific FAILURE at it. I added a picture to the blog to illustrate that fact. 🙂
Shelley, I don’t want to discourage you from trying mushroom logs, or anyone else. It could just be lack of enough shade and water. From what Terry says, it’s well worth the wait. He reaped meals for at least a couple of weeks I think.
Really interesting, and the photo’s are very good too. We also have funghi growing in different parts of the meadow. I will monitor them and post them some time soon. There are places near where I live where the edulis boletus grows and most people are just plain scared of it….. ..I’m fine with that though.
Since it sounds like you’re going to move your bees close to the meadow where there are lots of fungi, I wonder if you’ll be able to see bees feeding on the fungi. I’ve been looking in my wooded area, but I’ve never seen bees actually go to a rotting tree log. I would LOVE to get some video of that. Take a look at this Paul Stamets TED talk for a video of what I’m talking about.
http://permaculturenews.org/2014/11/27/paul-stamets-how-mushrooms-can-save-bees-our-food-supply-bioneers/
He has slides of bees feeding on his mycelium at about 12 minutes in.