Sharon has some impressive mushrooms growing in her yard.  We wish someone could identify them for us.  It turns out I have the same mushrooms growing in mine.  Are they edible?  I don’t have time to research it right now.

Even if I did – I’m not sure I would feel comfortable trying to eat these without a mycologist’s identification.  I have read that in some places in France you can bring any mushrooms you find to the local pharmacy and a professional will pick out any inedible ones for you.  People love to forage mushrooms in France, this way fewer people die doing it.  Genius.

I wish we had that here.  There are people who lead educational mushroom foraging walks in Sonoma County.  I am going to try to find out who to talk to next year when these come back.  Maybe I can get an expert to pronounce on these.

I am posting an exhaustive number of pictures in order to help identify them later from my books.  Just as an exercise for my own mycological education.

If those babies were edible you could make several meals out of that cluster!  And she has two of them in her yard!  No, wait, she has three.  Two big ones and one little one.

Even if they don’t turn out to be edible, they are COOL.  I’d still like to know what they are.

I like fungi.  They’re fascinating.

And beautiful.

  I want to get some edible fungi growing in the dark dampish corners of my yard.  Make use of all that shade.

I did see chanterelles growing in a really trashy yard down the street from me.  I didn’t know you could grow them in your yard.  From the looks of the house I’m guessing it was an accident of nature.  I’d like to reproduce that happy accident.

Right after Sharon showed me her mushroom riches I found an enormous clump of the same variety of mushroom growing in my own yard!

So this is something for me to work on some time before next year – trying to identify these beauties.  If you think you know what they are – please share!