Highlights

September 2023 - Mushrooms!, More Mushrooms!

ACTIVITY ALERT - Once again it is that time of year to find fantastic, fecund, fungi fruiting in the fall forest


An especially wet summer should promise an abundance of autumn mushrooms out in the woods this September. Let's check and see if that is true.

Date of the mushroom walk and more info will be determined by the fungi. More info in a future alert. Watch for it in early to mid September.

There are thousands of mushroom species in New England. They come in just about every color and shape. Here's a small sample, a dozen species, found right here in our neck of the woods.



Here's a mushroom that's hard to miss. Chicken mushroom. Orange on top, yellow on bottom. Usually found on tree trunks, limbs and stumps. Sometimes pops up out of the ground in a rosette form from tree roots or buried wood. 




King boletes, aka ceps, porcini, penny buns. 



Mock oyster mushroom. Oyster mushrooms are delicious. The mock oyster isn't.



Dryads are forest nymphs and tree spirits. They can lure you deep into the forest and be quite mischievous. Do they really use these mushrooms for saddles? 



Raspberry slime mold looks like a fungus and often hangs around with fungi, but isn't one. A slime mold is a protist, a eukaryotic organism.

 

Lingzhi (Japanese) reishi (Chinese) medicinal mushrooms that supposedly can improve your immune system.

 

Harvested oyster mushroom from off a forest maple tree. A delicious mushroom that is now grown commercially and found in your local supermarket.



Painted  boletes pop up after summer rains under eastern white pine trees.

 

They may not look delicious but they are. Black trumpets, aka horn of plenty mushrooms are in the chanterelle family.



A small beefsteak mushroom. Said to taste like steak. We don't think so.


A waxy cap mushroom. Mushrooms, the fruiting part of a fungus, come in an amazing array of shapes, colors and patterns.

 

 
The cauliflower mushroom looks quite like a cauliflower. Found in the fall at the base of pines.
 
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ACTIVITY ALERT - The Autumnal Equinox in our neck of the woods, bringing the first day of fall, arrived Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 2:50 a.m. Fall in New England forests means colorful foliage and a plethora of equally colorful mushrooms.  


Let's take a walk the day after autumn arrives and see what we can find in our local forest  SATUDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2023.  Meet at 8 a.m. at Fighting Rock Corner, the intersection of Wilson Road, Blossom Road and Bell Rock Road, Fall River. 

Length of walk variable. Walk as little or as much as you like. Wear suitable shoes/boots for walking on uneven ground. Insect repellent is good to have when hiking in the woods from April through October. Water and snack always a good idea.

Rain cancels walk.

Some mushroom hunters and their prey.

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