I know most people don’t even notice mushrooms in their yard or when walking in the forest, but both Rick and I are fungi lovers. Our cabin walks back in Colorado were always enhanced by finding new species to identify.

Since moving to NJ, we are fungally challenged. We are not familiar with Eastern shrooms at all. So far this year our mushrooms have been keeping a very low profile with not much rainfall. However, over the past two weeks we’ve had rain mixed with high humidity allowing the mycelium (ground molds) to grow and push forth from the ground in all kinds of mushrooms.

Over the past week my morning coffee walk around the yard has yielded great rewards. Mushrooms are fleeting. You have to catch them as soon as they pop up out of the ground because soon they will have “blossomed” and are gone. Or the squirrels eat them. It’s fun to see which ones get nibbled on and which ones are left alone for the slugs. I took some photos of a few when they first appeared and then what they looked like within about 8 hours or so. A few we have identified, but some we aren’t sure yet what they are. I know I will bore some of you with these photos, but I do want them archived in my blog so I’ll remember them next year.

I think this one is an amanita citrina (poisonous) I took before and after shots:

I don’t know what these yellow ones are, but they have a whole little family in the front side yard. They’ve popped up all over. I think they’re pretty. The squirrels don’t eat them.

These are Frost’s Boletes. They have pores instead of gills. Nothing ate them but the slugs ... very porous and icky.

Another pored mushroom. (not identified)

We have a great number of these ugly looking mushrooms. I don’t know what they are. Again, a before and after shot.

A gem-studded puffball:

We’ve had quite a few of these very large mushrooms growing in the leaf mold. (unidentified)

And least, but certainly not least—especially in sheer numbers—the squirrel’s favorite: a russula. These mushrooms come in a variety of colors. I didn’t take the time to figure out exactly which kind of russula this is.

I just wish the elegant stinkhorns would come up again! They were so strange. Nothing could be more un-elegant. Click here to see them last year.

That’s it for mushroom show-and-tell this time. Hopefully we’ll have a few more interesting ones pop up over the next month. We are certainly getting the rain and humidity necessary for them to thrive. At least something thrives in this humidity!