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geocaching n shroomin..


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Was a banner year for Chanterelle mushrooms here in Sweden, danged, though, if I couldn't find any of them!

 

Pity, too, cuz I sure love them sauteed in a little butter, yummmm!

I love chanterelles! I once harvested a 40 gallon plastic bag full of chanterelles just a couple of miles from our wilderness mountain home in a bumper-crop season! Best of all (this was before I was married to Sue), I found them while mushroom hunting with an incredibly hot girlfriend who was visiting from out-of-state; she was quite impressed, as chanterelles were her favorite mushroom, and she took home two large shopping bags full of chanterelles the next morning.

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Jack-O-Lantern and Chanterelles will only be confused by a complete novice. Complete novices should not be picking any kind of mushroom!

 

I've found Hen of the Woods, Chicken of the Woods (Sulfur Shelf), Chanterelles, morels, puffballs, oysters, and King Boletes while caching. In the spring and fall I don't cache without my mesh mushroom bag in my pocket.

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Caching introduced me to mushrooms a few years ago, and my friends all know I can't pass a nice bracket without shooting it. Sometimes, caching friends will email me with coords of a great spread that they are curious about, so that I can go and tell them what it is.

 

Even though I've been seeking, photographing and studying mushrooms for years, I am never confident enough in my amatuer identifications to pick and eat what I find, with one exception: giant puffballs. Because nothing else in the kingdom looks like them, and most every other type of choice edible has a deadly counterpart that looks very similar. I like my liver the way it is, so I just photograph them and leave them where they are.

 

Here's my Webshots mushroom album

 

Here are some recent shots that I haven't added to the album yet (none edible, BTW):

 

04ac60ff-a82a-401c-bd52-e9c1f6ef1b25.jpg

 

96680a3e-509e-4501-baa5-8cf645bd07ec.jpg

 

46a8d53f-8b46-4700-9edd-2d33d74cf8c6.jpg

Edited by 2qwerqE
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I believe your top picture is of sulfur shelf, it is edible, when young. Found this on it:

 

"The common name sulfur shelf derives from the yellow color of the edges of the margins.� Sulfur is yellow in its pure form.

 

A second variant, having whiter margins is a variant known as semialbinus, the albinus referring to the (albino) white features.� It is also called Laetiporus cincinnatus.

 

The entire fruit body is edible when it is young. However, when it matures (several weeks), it becomes fibrous and only the edges of the margin are edible.� If the margin breaks off smoothly, it will be palatable. If it is stringy (like overcooked chicken) it will not be."

 

We had a HUGE one of these things on a tree in our yard. The orange is just amazing, especially at sunrise! I'll try to locate a picture.

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I believe the top picture is Laetiporus sulphureus, an edible species. It's good when very fresh, but I don't really care for it unless it's cooked just right.

 

I am never confident enough in my amatuer identifications to pick and eat what I find, with one exception: giant puffballs.

 

One word of warning about puffballs: some mushrooms, when very young, develop from an "egg" that can be mistaken for a puffball. Most notorious is the genus Amanita, which contains some of the deadliest species. Stinkhorns develop the same way, though their eggs are edible and some people claim they are quite good (however, a mature stinkhorn, for obvious reasons, is NOT very palatable!). When collecting puffballs, we always cut them in half to make sure- if you cut one open and see an outline shaped like a mushroom inside, don't eat it! I couldn't find a picture online, but if you have the book Mushrooms Demystified, see the picture at the top of page 679 for an example.

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Here are some recent shots that I haven't added to the album yet (none edible, BTW):

 

04ac60ff-a82a-401c-bd52-e9c1f6ef1b25.jpg

 

This is indeed the "Sulfur shelf" aka "Chicken of the woods" and is generally edible, although as others have stated, only the young brackets are tasty.

 

 

96680a3e-509e-4501-baa5-8cf645bd07ec.jpg

Amanita Muscaria (Fly agaric)... EXTREMELY POISONOUS!! There is also a red and white variant.

Oh... this may possibly be a cache container, too.

 

 

46a8d53f-8b46-4700-9edd-2d33d74cf8c6.jpg

I'm not sure about this one. Any mushroom that you cannot identify 100% must be considered inedible until proven otherwise.

Edited by knowschad
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96680a3e-509e-4501-baa5-8cf645bd07ec.jpg

Amanita Muscaria (Fly agaric)... EXTREMELY POISONOUS!! There is also a red and white variant.

Oh... this may possibly be a cache container, too.

 

...which doesn't stop some people from eating it, though :mad:

 

(disclaimer: I've never tried it, nor do I ever plan to)

 

--------

Back on topic, just this weekend at a cache in Minnesota (where the fungi are out in force), I noticed that one of the logs from a week ago mentioned that they found some edible mushrooms, but forgot their basket and had to carry them out in their shirt. No mention of the species, though, and by the time I got there all I found was old, dried, unidentifiable remains.

 

I did find some Coprinus at another cache, but the pictures are on the camera, which is at home.

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Back on topic, just this weekend at a cache in Minnesota (where the fungi are out in force), I noticed that one of the logs from a week ago mentioned that they found some edible mushrooms, but forgot their basket and had to carry them out in their shirt. No mention of the species, though, and by the time I got there all I found was old, dried, unidentifiable remains.

 

 

Too cool!! I suspect that you're referring to my friend, Only1bones' log for Bear Lake Park (GC15MAZ). The mushrooms were King Boletes.

 

September 14 by Only1bones (93 found)

Nice easy find and a wonderful trail. Out with knowschad and his geodog Chili.

We forgot the 'shroom bag.....so I decided to use my sweatshirt as the container.......while it was still on me!

 

TN left foreign coin. SL TFTC

795ca5fc-f39a-4696-b7b3-91846b30ba9b.jpg

Edited by knowschad
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It's great to see an interesting topic, rather than just the same old stuff.

I love fungi and often post pics on my logs. As we live near the forest there are hundreds of types around at this time of year so I got one of those pocket books to help identify them for this autumn. Hopefully that way I can stay alive. :D

This is from last week

Shroom1.jpg

and these are from the same tree.

Shroom2.jpg

Shroom3.jpg

Shroom4.jpg

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It's great to see an interesting topic, rather than just the same old stuff.

I love fungi and often post pics on my logs. As we live near the forest there are hundreds of types around at this time of year so I got one of those pocket books to help identify them for this autumn. Hopefully that way I can stay alive. :D

This is from last week

Shroom1.jpg

and these are from the same tree.

Shroom2.jpg

Shroom3.jpg

Shroom4.jpg

Sure looks like oyster mushrooms to me. (In the middle two pics) YUM! One of many types I won't pass up ever!

Edited by muddy frogs
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This is great. I don't know any mushrooms but I always enjoy finding them and looking at the many varieties while out geocaching. I've posted several pics in logs.

103efa45-51be-4461-b427-b8a383ba6bfe.jpg

7e42114d-c8c4-46c9-b35e-a953d5443451.jpg

 

These are ***PROBABLY*** the common meadow mushroom. Closely related to the button mushrooms that you buy at the store. But also very similar looking to some poisonous mushrooms, so why take the chance? Buy them at the store.

 

Spotting wild mushrooms, whether edible or not, are definately one of the things that I enjoy about geocaching. The very first cache I went to (I followed some coworkers that were going for a cache in the woods near where I work) took me right into a place where I also hunted morels. And this was during morel season!! Not wanting to give away my morel spot, I'm cringing with each step they took, and paying very close attention to each step that I took, hoping we wouldn't damage any!!

 

That cache is still there, and I still hunt morels there every year, but I've yet to run into a cacher while hunting them.

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Interesting story about shrooming. I hid an ammo box in the hollow of a downed tree. Covered it real well but did not publish the cache for a month. The FTF posted a log and then contacted me to give me more details. Apparently, a non-caching NYC sanitation shroomer was out shrooming a month earlier and found my cache. He posted a note about himself and shrooming and also left some union brochures and moved on. :laughing:

 

I wonder if he found any shrooms?

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I'm not into shrooms -- used to be :laughing: Is it true if you place a nickel on the mushroom in question and it turns blue its poisonous if the shroom is unchanged you're ok?

 

No. If you place a nickel on a mushroom and it turns blue, that means that if you place a nickel on that mushroom, it will turn blue.

 

Seriously, there are almost as many different mushroom toxins as there are toxic mushrooms. No one rule can fit them all. The rule is that ANY mushroom that you can't positively prove to be edible is inedible. When in doubt, toss it out.

 

One fascinating family of INedible mushrooms that geocachers in many parts of the country can see during this time of the year is the "stinkhorn" family.

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GPSr and Mushrooms, Mushrooms and GPSr they are a natural. I now have all my mushroom patches with coordiantes on a map and in a spreadsheet sot hat I can check the date and go to the patch. I love mushrooms. If you are interested go find a mycological society there are a number of them in many metropolitan areas. If you are unsure of a mushroom there are may ways of identifying them positvely from their morphology to their spore prints.

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Great topic - I've spent lots of time photographing fungi while out caching. As a complete amateur, I have no idea what I'm looking at, but they're fascinating nonetheless!

 

Here's a photo I took back in the early spring - any idea what this is? It was maybe 4 or 5 inches tall. And, yes, it does look like the plant from "Little Shop of Horrors".

 

Thanks!

 

f9fba5ae-bdc3-4b27-b3fe-cd0b12f15181.jpg

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geocaching n shroomin..

 

Isn't that an oxymoron?

 

I mean, wouldn't you just sit there and laugh and forget about the cachin' part. :):)

 

I can just picture it:

 

WOW everything is so greeeeeen. Ooops, I seem to have dropped all my fingers somewhere. Ummm, where's my GPS? Ahhh, a SPIDER!!! :D:D:)

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f9fba5ae-bdc3-4b27-b3fe-cd0b12f15181.jpg

 

Looks like Ganoderma lucidum, or it could be G. tsugae if growing on dead hemlock. I'm not sure what's going on with that ghostly white on on the right, though- maybe it's infected with a parasitic fungus?

 

You can actually see his picture? All I see is a broken link icon.

 

Ganoderma lucidum... is that the Beefsteak Polypore?

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