Identifying mushrooms is one of the challenging tasks for me. In autumn, till spring they sprout in abundance in this part of California. Barring the obvious familiar few, most of these macro fungi are yet to be identified. Without any professional help, I will hardly be able to recognize them.
Sulfur mushroom or chicken of the woods.......for their characteristic yellow, I recognize them well...
I saw this clump of flat, chocolate brown shiny mushrooms on the shadowy turf under the gigantic pine by the sidewalk. Searching for its identity, I stumbled across a website that dealt on a mushroom which resembled this one. Going by the morphological criteria, it should be a Suillus group member, commonly known as 'Slippery jack'.
This is Caterpillar fungi (Cordyceps sinesis), a medicinal mushroom, commonly used in China. Having published a research paper on therapeutic properties of mushrooms, i am quite interested to find and identify new species. The South California weather is perfect for sprouting wild mushrooms, specially the humid autumn. I saw this never-seen-before mushroom in San Diego Zoo.
these mushrooms prefer insect exo skeletons for growing.....can be evaluated for mosquito control..
Ganoderma, artists's conk or bracket fungus invading an ash tree...
Many ganoderma have medicinal values.......
Another conk sprouting from a mahonia tree......
Growing at the base of an oleander bush.........
Inky caps..........
Some gilled mushroom..must be of Pleurotus genus...
Turkey tail..........
Extreme care must be taken to consume mushrooms......several of them are highly toxic..
The link to my published review on medicinal mushrooms:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339609/
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