Let the munchkin fun continue!

Adding on to last week where we saw some of Beacon’s little mushroom friends of a typical shape, I’d love to show you some of the other varieties that can be found here in the fall. I’ll provide a description, and you see if you can find it in the gallery below! I won’t be naming all the mushrooms, so you’ll have to narrow down the field:

• Coral fungi are as close as we get to the Great Barrier Reef around here! Their branching arms definitely give it an underwater feel. They can often be found in big clumps on rotten logs.

• Black Trumpet mushrooms are also known as “The Trumpet of Death” and “The Horn of Plenty” - I guess it depends on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist!

• Puffball mushrooms are fascinating when they reach the stage of releasing spores, which are a mushroom’s version of seeds. The puffballs spores are stored inside, and at the appropriate moment they develop a hole and send a puff of spores into the air anytime something or someone brushes by them. I love poking them on purpose to see the wisp of dark spores that is ejected!

• Orange jelly fungius looks a lot like squishy candy on a log! This kind of jelly fungi has the nickname “Witch’s Butter” and tends to like coniferous trees.

• Some fungi are called bracket fungi because of their shelf-like appearance and the horizontal way they attach to logs or trunks. One particularly frilly variety is called Turkey Tail.

Take a hike in the woods and see if any of these varieties of mushrooms are found near you!