Mushrooms, as promised

The best thing about October here in the Lower Mainland is the sudden spate of mushrooms, popping out of their hiding places (like condominiums, says A Local Naturalist), and staying from the first rains until the first hard frosts. (Last October's findings here.)

The first ones, around here at least, are tiny. The corals and the big boletes and the cowpie (my name for big, flat, brown polypores) mushrooms take their time.

So here, mostly unidentified, are the little ones we found in the Watershed a couple of days ago.

Very attractive gilled mushrooms, purple-topped, with dark purple stems.


A mix; brick-red, white, and a pale mycena (I think). The white ones are everywhere; they are mostly tiny, ranging from a pin-head to an inch across.


A clump of black-stemmed "umbrellas". Very delicate things, these are; they break off if you so much as brush against them.


The slugs got the few larger white mushrooms, and the purple-red topped ones. And a man was out looking for supper goodies; he said he'd found only three. I don't know what he was looking for. I really wouldn't eat anything but a puffball or maybe a boletus from here. (If I could find one without worms or slug slime, that is.)

But there were other fungi, as well:


Some pretty lichen on a tree.


More lichens, inside a burned-out stump. These ones look poisonous enough. A shapeless, multi-coloured coating on the dead wood.

And these tiny cup mushrooms: I had never seen any aqua-coloured ones here before. It was raining too hard at this point to spend much time kneeling in the wet leaves, trying to keep the rain off my lens while I took photos. I broke a tip off the rotting stick, and brought it home.


The largest of these is about a sixteenth of an inch across. And these tip ones seem pretty battered, compared to the ones farther up on the branch.


One seemed undamaged. It looks like a golf tee or a hollowed-out white chocolate kiss, gone greenish. The closest I can come to an ID is the green stain, but all the characteristics don't line up. My guide says that, "Other greenish cup fungi can only be differentiated microscopically." Beyond my capabilities. Let it rest at this; a blue-green cup mushroom.


Of course, there were polypores. There are always polypores, of all descriptions. Laurie found a beautiful hoof-shaped shelf, possibly a young red-belted, so white around the rolled rim that my camera balked at it.

And by then, so did we. We were cold and wet; time for Tim Horton's, tea and coffee.