School starts for the children this week and it’s also an educational time to be a wild mushroom gatherer in eastern Canada with the cooler nights come a whole new group of wild mushrooms to join up with the summer mushrooms which will also remain for a while longer. The new families to appear have a great number of members and these families include the Cortinarius which has a representative shown above, the Tricholoma and the Hygrophoros along with a few others will make it hard to choose which mushrooms to focus on. Many of the mushrooms in these families are inedible or poisonous and I haven’t spent much time over the years getting to know them as edibles were my main concern though they are very beautiful to see out in the woods and some like the Cortinarius shown above also have interesting aromas with this purple colored mushroom smelling like freshly boiled potatoes. So today I will show some mushrooms I commonly see and will need to send away to finally be able to identify with certainty. Guessing the above mushroom is Cortinarius traganus?
Now this mushroom looks like what is considered by many to be one of the world’s most common mushrooms Laccaria laccata though these ones in the photo have larger caps and longer stems and I will send these away asking if they are actually Laccaria nobilis?
Tricholoma are tricky to ID with the many shades of cap color within some species. I’m guessing the yellow mushrooms on the left are Tricholoma subluteum? On the right we have a real common mushroom under mixed forest and conifers which I have never took the time to verify its identity and was surprised it wasn’t easy to find on the net. There are a few possibilities though my guess is Russula sanguinaria?
I’m a little embarrassed to show this super common mushroom which everybody in the maritime provinces has walked past numerous times. I can’t with certainty tell you the identity of these beautiful little mushrooms though my guess is Hygrocybe miniata?
Last one, another purple Cort and this one doesn’t have as much brown tones or any potato scent, if its cap wasn’t so smooth I would guess it was the rare Cortinarius violaceus?
I’ll mail these in dried form to my teacher, wish me luck in getting a passing grade on this little test I created for myself. ciao
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