Mushrooms come out after some rain has fallen and the nights get down into the mid-40's. The confluence of those two things occurred this past week where we live and so a bunch of mushrooms showed up.
We have many different kinds of mushrooms and fungus here. The very first thing to pop out is "Chicken of the Woods" which is edible and huge. I've never tried it. It is said to be meat-like in texture with a mild woody flavor. I've read that people cook them up in skillet like a piece of meat.
We have a number of other mushrooms. Some have interesting qualities because they are in the psilocybin mushroom family which has over 200 different types. The strongest ones don't grow here. Those are called Liberty Bells and grow in the coastal mountain range of northern California and Oregon. You could probably go find some if you visited sidepocket or maggiejean since they live in the right area. They look like this:
I'm going to post some pics of mushrooms I took yesterday and the day before. Mushrooms last for short times. Rains will "melt" them away. Today most of the mushrooms I took pictures of just one or two days ago are already gone!
The first picture below is actually Asarum which is called "Wild Ginger." It's used in Chinese Medicine as an herb in formulas to fight certain types of colds. It's actually poisonous if you consume too much. You can tell when an herb is poisonous if you chew a little bit of it and your tongue and mouth start going numb. Spit it out.
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