I give up.
Online mushroom identification is geared towards two groups:
a) those who want to find wild mushrooms to eat, and
b) those who want to find wild mushrooms to get high.
Since I want to do neither, I spent an extremely frustrating hour trying to identify just the first fungus above.
The other day when I had the Calostoma species it was a lot easier. I remembered seeing something similar in my one slim mushroom field guide and was able to Google that and find its relatives.
So, online mushroom identification can be simple... if you already know what you have.
Otherwise, like me, you need to buy a book.
(There is the beautiful Rogers Mushrooms online, but I believe it's mainly geared towards Europe at present.)
If anyone happens to know the ID of any of these, feel free to leave a comment, or email me.
ReplyDeleteI think the first one isn't a mushroom at all. It looks like a cow poo that came from a cow that had been eating a sewage pipe.
ReplyDeletePoor cow..
It looks a bit like a black version of Sarcosphaera crassa, but I am no expert at all.
ReplyDeleteThis website takes you to all sorts of fungi pictures on the net: http://www.fungi.fvlmedia.dk/ But you need to have at least a bit of an idea, what you are looking for. The Latin name helps...
If that first one showed up on my property, I would call Sigourney Weaver really quick. She knows how to handle their kind!
ReplyDeleteNot an earthstar is it? I'm not much of a fungi identifier...he said stating the obvious.
Floridacracker, that's hilarious!
ReplyDeleteA quick look at my Mushroom of Ontario and I think it may be Sand-Loving Cup Peziza ammophila. Description is as follows:
ReplyDelete"Fruitbodies (apothecia) are up to 4 cm wide, dark brown inside, with an ochre outer surface, and cup-shaped at first, but split and reflex to become flattened on the sand in a star-shaped form....species fruties in the coastal areas...in fall."
I live in Western WA, the fungi capitol of the world.
ReplyDeleteMy family and I are amateur myco gatherers. Here is a website from California but it has quite a spectrum of fungi.
http://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/genera/
Good luck
My husband's best guess on the first one is that its a puffball mushroom that exploded! ;-)
ReplyDeleteThe top one is an earthstar. Don't know the others though.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure you can't find these on the "those who want to find wild mushrooms to get high" sites?...especially the first one. I'm with The Cracker on that thought. heh!
ReplyDeleteI like the colors of the last one.
The horticulturalist at our cooperative extension agency will identify plants and fungus and diseases and stuff from emailed pictures and description of habitat. Perhaps you can see if you have a similar resource in your county/state.
ReplyDeleteThanks everybody.
ReplyDeleteYeah I think the first one is some type of Easthstar but I haven't found anything that seems to match it exactly yet. (DPR it's open like this all the time, although I suspect like Turtleheart said, it was a ball and has now exploded.) The middle pic was from a little earlier in the year. One of these days maybe I'll get industrious and do a spore print!
The bottom pic is actually two different fungi on the same log. One red one in a sea of green.
I finally ordered the Peterson's mushroom guide, but it's taking forever to get here.
Earth girl, our extension office is way, way understaffed at present due to $$ cutbacks. In the growing season they now route all calls like that to a hotline staffed by volunteers. So sometimes the person who fields that type of call is... me! But I've got the full force of the extension library behind me at those times, so it's a lot easier. :)