2026-01 mushroom walk with MSSF
Mushroom walk with MSSF foraging activity, I didn't find anything edible, others found some chantereles and black trumpet on the way back. but a fun event and a nice place to hike!
Northern red belt vs artist's conk (gandoerma brownii) are different things. next time try to identify them and tell the differences.
This one only grows in California. Only on bay tree.
Surf Tuft. I have seen many times of this mushroom but this time Acorn (?) ligthen up the mushroom with a 300mm mineral inspection light. Honestly I don't find the glowing very obvious..
First time seeing some slimes! searching the id telling me that this would turn into hairy chocolate color with spores. Slime is actually not fungi! The misconception comes from naming of mold. However they actually are like amoeba kinda animal.
Waxy cap, hearing people identified them a lot but each looked different. https://youtu.be/23VW8ItU3Yc?t=366 here suggests mainly the gills is waxy. but haven't tried it so far. would worth trying. Even single trip see two kinds.
Misc
I heard people talking about banana slug growing in northern part of california. bay area ones are pure yellow ones. They are intrigued to find the population boundary but never find a place with both individuals. This is a fascinating observation. Are they sub species or the same species?
False turkey tail is just Stereum which can be identified with their orange color underside.
True turkey tail has white color underside. Some people using it in the tea even bitter.
Asking about Acorn how to identify russula given so many types of them? She suggested that besides the chalk stipes, all have brittle gills if you squeeze them they would become crumbs; all but one having white gills.
Witcher's butter, good for lung health? Yeah, some species of the jelly fungi species.
Witcher's butter specifically is parasitic on crust fungi, which is a decomposer fungi of the dead wood (so they are not decomposing the deadwood). but some jelly fungi in the family indeed parasitic on lichen.
gilled polypores so weird name. polypores means like ganoderma, turkey tail where the pores are vertical small tubes, a lot. gilled are different. but gilled polypore is just because their appearance is organized: micro level it's vertical tube but the appearance also gill to further increase the surface area for spores. they are still polypores if bio speaking
https://gemini.google.com/share/838f6dfaff61
