Mushroom Season is Here

 

Wow! Summer chanterelle mushroom bonanza!

Not so heavenly in my white chanterelle heaven this year

All the mushrooms are Frozen, the season is over

 

Fairy rings of Chanterelles

Running down the mountain to avoid the snow while mushroom hunting

Finding lots of chanterelles in Western Washington October 2023

Mushroom Hunt

 

This video will not be fully rendered into HDR until about 3pm on 10/19/2023

Short Video of a successful Verpa Mushroom Hunt

Spring Verpas are here!

Verpas are here, but first let's give our thanks to the mycorrrhizal host tree. Fungi are mostly symbiotic with vascular plants. My verpas has formed a mycorrhizal partnership with this beautiful, bountiful old cotton wood tree.

Pictures of tiny plants and fungi

Complex thalloid liverwort Marchantia polymorpha at the History Museum:

Marchantia polymorpha at the Shelton History Museum

The cutest little moss I know Grimmia pulvinata at the Cornerstone building

Xanthoria polycarpa at Loop Field

Syntrichia ruralis at the cornerstone building

All rights reserved copywrite 2012

Evergreen State College to host "Fungal Expo"

When:  Thursday, December 8, 2011.

Time:   11:00am until 2:00pm..

Where: Library Hallway on the Evergreen State College Campus

Description We will be showcasing a variety of interesting projects related to fungal kingdom.

What kind of creature can be used as medicine, dye for yarn, for edible culinary delights, can break down plastics, grows year round in alpine areas, can be used as biomonitors for airpollution, and more? Fungi of course!

The students of The Evergreen State College's 2011 Fungal Kingdom class are bringing these shining star roles of fungi to the community on December 8, at the TESC campus. It will be located in the lobby adjacent to the library.

The 2011 Fungal Expo will feature culinary delights, info on how to cultivate edible and medicinal mushrooms, a fungi cookbook, fungal bioremediation of plastics, fungi-orchid symbiosis, lichen that are used as biomonitors, a mushroom dye workshop, and much more!

Invite your friends! Make the journey! It's free and you will be sure to learn a lot!

(P.S. If you have been "trespassed" from TESC by Larry Savage and  have been told by a judge to leave me the hell alone, don't even think about coming..)

Avoid Staircase, unless you like being harassed

Ranger Jobsworth sees them this way

most of us see them this way (Gomphidius sub roseus)

We had to go back to staircase today because my little on lost her toy out there yesterday and it was a special toy that we bought in China. I did not want to go back there ever, after the B.S. I endured yesterday, but for the sake of my child, I went back. ( I left in a hurry yesterday because I was upset with the Ranger and that is probably when the toy was lost.) I brought my husband with me to Staircase this time. I went through the campground looking for the toy but I did not spend much time looking because I did not want to have another run in with Ranger Jobsworth. My husband waited in the car while we looked.

A ranger pulled through the campground while I was looking for the toy, I did not look to see what ranger it was. If it was Rangers Jobsworth I sure did not want to make eye contact with him and start another big hassle.

Anyway we could not find the toy and my husband is very weak and ill today, so I sent my daughter in to the ranger station to ask if her toy had been found. I did not want to go in there and speak to Mr. Jobsworth if he was in there, so I waited at the car with my ill husband.

So my little one went into the rangers station to ask if her toy had been found. Then Mr. Jobsworth himself came marching out to our car. Great.. just great.. I had no desire to speak to that prick, so I let my husband do the talking and I just watched. Ranger jobsworth pretended to be a nice guy and offered to fill out a lost and found report. He even offered to go fetch it, but before he left to get the report he eyeballed the inside of my car and finding nothing he then asked me if I had picked any mushrooms. I had not, I'll never pick mushrooms at Staircase again after that carry on yesterday. (even though it's perfectly legal to pick mushrooms there) I shook my head "no" so then he asked if I was just taking pictures and I nodded my head yes.. then he asked if I had picked mushrooms in the national forest and I shook my head no.. Sheesh.. you would think it was a crime to pick any mushroom anywhere by the way he acted.

After he fetched the lost and found form and brought it back to our car and finished filling it out ( he spelled the word dinosaur "dinasor") he started in on me again. He asked me to come away from my husband so he could talk to me. I refused, I said "no, I'm staying right here with my husband" So then he asked me to shut the driver side door in the back where my daughter was sitting, I was standing up at the drivers door. After I shut the door he came over and peered into my open backpack on the drivers seat and started once again demanding to know if I had any mushrooms and accusing me of hiding from him and being dishonest and so forth. He also demanded to know why we did not come to him for help. Uh, we did come to him for help, but not until after trying to find the toy without his help. Now this is total B.S., we were a family there to retrieve a lost toy AND mushroom picking is not illegal and I had not hid from the Ranger Jobsworth. My husband thinks that Ranger jobsworth was trying to egg me on... well he failed, I did not bite. I have all of this on video.

My husband says that while my daughter and I were looking for her toy in the campground, this same Ranger was going around to every car in the park demanding something from the passengers. I don't know what he was demanding. I know that he never once looked at my dash to see if I had a parks pass; all he cared about was mushrooms, maybe he was checking for passes, or maybe he was checking for mushrooms.. Who knows? The guy is an absolute prick who harasses law abiding families who come to enjoy the park and relax on a Sunday afternoon, that's all I know for sure.

There's no joy left at Staircase now that Ken Davis is in charge. We won't be going back unless we hear that he has moved on. Luckily I don't go there much anyway because I like to hike with my dog, and dogs are not allowed on trails in the National Park.

We left staircase immediately after the interrogation finished and we went into the National Forest to try to get some relaxation but my husband was too freaked out by the whole thing so we went way down by Big Creek to look for my daughter's toy in another place that we had stopped at yesterday and we found some Chanterelles there, funny they were old ones and we did not find any there yesterday.  When I came back down to the car with mushrooms my husband freaked out and wanted me to throw them away. That's a what prick this ranger is, my husband is now afraid when I pick mushrooms in the National Forest. Well I'm not about to stop picking mushrooms in the National Forest, I know the laws and I'm not scared. But I don't need any B.S., either, so I won't be going back to Staircase any time soon.

This Ranger is the new head of the district, his name is Ken Davis and he has a southern accent. Perhaps where he comes from picking mushrooms is a foreign concept? If he's going to be a Ranger in the Pacific Northwest he's just going to have to get over the fact that people pick mushrooms here AND it's perfectly legal to harvest one quart of mushrooms per person per day in the National park.

While I was in the campsite today I took a picture of the mushrooms he smashed yesterday.   You can clearly see that I had less then a quart of mushrooms.

Boletus Zelleri that Ranger Jobsworth smashed because he thought I could not ID it

Another reason to avoid staircase this winter

I can't ID these for sure without a spore print and can't pick
 them to get a spore print according to Ranger jobsworth

Lake Cusham is the lowest I have ever seen it, people used to jump off this rock (Party Rock)
 in the summer, I never thought it looked particularly safe though

Basket dyed with Phaeolus schweinitzii "dyers polypore"

The bottom of the basket was dyed with dyers polypore. At first I used ammonia as a mordant, later I put in vinegar and the dye went from brownish to yellowish, oh and I threw some alum in at some point. As the basket dries it is getting more yellow. There are two rows of cat tails as well as cat tails on the basket handle. The cat tails were dyed too. The only undyed parts are the main reeds going up and the section of small twined reeds near the middle. It took me about 5 hours to make this basket, not counting the time it took to collect the materials. Most of the materials were purchased in a thrift shop. I happened on to a huge box of way underpriced basketry material at a thrift shop about 8 years ago. I don't normally buy basketry materiel, as it is so expensive. I normally use cat tails (after they wilt in the fall so as to not rob energy from the plant)  and English Ivy.

 English Ivy is a fun material to use; it is one of the few materials that does not require drying or soaking before use, it can be used fresh.  English Ivy is also an invasive weed that kills trees so I strongly encourage people to use it for basket making.

Here the body of the basket is almost done. Finishing off the rim is the most time consuming (and confusing) part for me to do.

Here it is all done but still wet. This is the first basket I have made in about 6 years.  I designed this basket to fit inside of my day pack.  My day pack is tall and narrow and I did not have a basket that fit inside of it.  I also made the handle short so it would fit inside my pack.

Lower South Fork Skokomish with my class, sort of

Beautiful Amanitas to Study

Lower South Fork Skokomish

This was to be a class field trip but I got a jump start on my class so I could look for that cauliflower mushroom that I only picked half of the last time I was out there. I arrived at the trailhead at 9:45; my class was due to leave the college in Olympia at 9:30. I strolled down the trail to my cauliflower spot and found that someone had picked it, darn it. They pulled it up by the roots too, so I don’t think it will grow back there. A bit further down the trail I found another cauliflower mushroom stump.

I wandered casually down the trail until about noon and then I realized that my class might be worried about me if I did not come out of the woods. So I skipped my lunch and rushed back, while making my usual 10 mile loop. When I got back my class was not there. Had my class arrived at the trail head and left in the time I had been out picking? I never got the vibes that a big group was on the trail behind me. Sounds carry a long way down that river and I usually have a sixth sense that tells me when there are large groups of people on the trail.

I checked Brown Creek camp on the way out and my class was not their either so I brewed up my tea, ate my lunch and did some stretches. Then I decided to walk around the campground loop as a cool down hike. I was instantly rewarded with a cluster of Shaggy manes.

After I was done walking the loop I drove home. While I was driving home two ambulances (one with its lights flashing) and three forest rangers passed me going the opposite direction. I have never seen an ambulance way out there on the 23 before. I hope it had nothing to do with my class. I’m not entirely convinced that the professors knew how to get to the trail head. Did they get lost out past Spider Lake and roll a van over?? I hope not. I also hope that I get full credit for this field trip even though no one saw me there!

My new ankle brace is great! It did not cause me any pain until I had hiked 7 miles and by then both of my feet were hurting, so I can’t blame the brace for that. I did not sprain my ankle at all; I think the brace saved my ankle about half a dozen times. Perhaps I am ready to hit the trail again??!!! Oh boy is I going to be sore tomorrow though, I did ten miles and I have not hiked for five months! My average moving speed was 3MPH because I hiked at about 3.2 MPH on the way out.

I saw chanterelles, sulfur tufts, Zellers boletus, rotten reshi conks, volvaria of some sort, rotten chicken of the woods (in 4 places), slippery jacks and cauliflower stumps. The mushrooms are a bit sparse this year. I only found 6 chanterelles in the spot I call chanterelle heaven, but they were nice clean ones.

10 miles in six hours.. Almost no elevation gain. I’ll post pictures later, I need to find out what happened to my class first.

There are a few nice new bridges up on the trail and the trail has been re-routed around the washout where I used to have lunch. The river no longer flows at my lunch site, it has moved to the other side of the valley.

Admirable bolete with  asco infection

Pretty poison Agaric cap

Pretty poison Agrics

Pretty poison Agaricus

Shaggy Manes at Brown Creek Camp

Angry garter snake tried to bite me

 Pigs ear mushroom mushrooms

Oyster mushrooms

Old reshi conk

Hard slime molds

Nice new bridge

Fall colors on the Skok

The river has left my lunch spot

Shaggy manes