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Our new Fall resolution is that we will go to the Fells for a walk every Sunday, no matter what the weather. It was a grey and rainy day yesterday, and a good test of our resolve. Erik made us breakfast and helped herd us out.

Since it is prime shrooming season, we decided to start educating ourselves about fungus, and picked several varieties of mushroom to bring home and identify. There is really an amazing variety of mushrooms out there in the fells.

Unfortunately, at one point in our off-path hunting, we disturbed a nest of yellow jackets and were attacked by the aggressive little devils. Erik was stung first and while we were standing there trying to figure out what had stung him, Vigo was stung on the back. We quickly walked back to the path, where Sam was stung. Then I saw one of the miniscule pests on Vigo's belt, trying to sting him again. I swatted him and moved everyone quickly up the path farther. I was lucky not to be stung, mostly beacuse I was wearing a long leather coat. Apparently the yellow jacket sting is wickidly painful. Vigo was brave about it, but then after we got out of the woods at the end of our walk he ended up getting stung once more by a bug that had crawled into the sleave of his rain jacket. He's a little wary of going back to the Fells at all now, but I'm sure he'll get over it.

After our walk in the woods, we dropped Vigo off for a playdate to make stop-action Bionicle movies with Jonah, while Erik and I went to the bookstore to look for a field guide. We found two guides and after a lot of comparing the pros and the cons we settled on the Audubon Society guide. We're hoping our friends Brian and Aaron will be into fungus study, too, and will get another guide for cross-reference. We used the book to find good candidates and the internet for better confirmation.

Of all of the mushrooms we found, we were able to identify three with some confidence, and one was a choice edible!

Gem Studded Puffball
lycoperdon perlatum


The two mushrooms on the left are gem-studded puffballs. The smooth-surfaced one on the right is an unidentified pufffball whose flesh was yellowish rather than white.

This little mushroom was fairly abundant on our walk. These are about 2-3 inches high. From our field guide: "This species is easy to recognize. It is a choice edible if, when cut in half, it has undifferentiated white flesh."



It can be confused with the pear-shaped puffball, which is also a choice edible. We tried a half of one each this morning and they were delicious.

Viscid Violet Cort
cortinarius iodes


This mushroom was all over the place, and really beautiful and slimy in the rain. There are good edible blue mushrooms, but this is not one of them. They are not poisonous, but our guide book says "they look better than they taste."

Emetic Russula
russula emetica


This is the last of the mushrooms of which we felt confident in our identification. As it's name suggests, it is not to be eaten. ("Emetic" means "induces nausea and vomiting.")

Here are the other mushrooms we picked and tried to identify, along with our guesses as to what they might be.

probably Painted Suillus
suillus pictus



The painted suillus is a good edible and this is very likely what this is, but we aren't going to try tasting it until we have full confidence in the identification. We aren't sure that the big mushroom is the larger version of the smaller one, either. Suillus pictus grows only under Eastern White Pine trees, five-needle pines. That will be a help in confirming the identification next time.

probably melanoleuca melaleuca



maybe some kind of trich


Probably poisonous.

Photos:

Maps:

The Fells, popular places

Tags:

walk , hike , mushrooms , fun , family , kids , fells , fungus