Know your fungi? Help us!
Unknown mushroom #1. Photo: Conant Neville
Last weekend I headed to the Adirondacks to bag some more peaks and check them off my list. I’m hoping to become a 46er before I graduate this year. With all the nice weather, I took advantage of the weekend and spent Saturday hiking Nippletop and Dial with some friends.
We met several people along the trail, but the most interesting thing on trail for me was the abundance of mushrooms.
Although things had dried out quite a bit with the warm weather and sunshine, the trail was still sloppy. I think all the moisture has encouraged fungus growth, which explains why I ran into a lot of mushrooms along the trail. I am not much of a mycologist, but I snapped several photos of my fungal friends as I hiked and I’m hoping some of you can help me identify them–maybe some of them are even edible–but if not, they’re still pretty cool looking.
Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve any guesses, and make sure to tell us a bit about these mysterious mushrooms if you have a fungal affinity.
Unknown mushroom #2. Photo: Conant Neville
Unknown mushroom #3. Photo: Conant Neville
Unknown mushroom #4. Photo: Conant Neville
Tags: adirondacks, mushrooms, science
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The one on top looks like an Amanita species
To identify mushroom reliably you need to have more than a photograph, you need to see the structure of the gills, if there are gills, color of spores etc. You should get a good mushroom book though most have their strengths and weaknesses. Mushrooms Demystified is an excellent book but hardly a field guide. Rent it from the library though.
That said the purple/blue mushrooms are super cool. Never seen any. I’ll have to check my book when I have some time.
Your mushroom pictures are good enough to identify them as the following;
#1 Amanita flavoconia
#2 Boletus subvelutipes
#3 probably Ganoderma applanatum, the artist conk in poor condition
#4 Cortinarius violaceus
Do not eat any, #1 and #4 are in very poisonous groups, #2 some people can eat but some get sick, and #3 is like eating wood but has some medicinal value if ground up and used to make a tea
I love the photos…more fruit of a moist year?
i only dare to have a meal of Morell mushrooms let us know of other wild eatables