A Couple of Winter Mushrooms: One Edible and One Deadly

In my last post, I had some photos of the edible wood ear fungus, Auricularia auricula, that I spotted in the woods next to Lake Russell in Georgia over the Christmas holidays.  There were a couple of other mushrooms out, too.  The oyster mushroom, Pleurotus spp., shown below is another good edible that is easily identified and has no poisonous "look-alikes". 

Lovely, pale yellow Pleuortus growing on a fallen pine tree.  You can see the gills of the specimen on the left.

That is not the case with the mushrooms in the next two photos.  These are an Amanita spp., either A. phalloides, known as Death Cap  or A. bisporigera, known as Destroying Angel or Death Angel.  You get the idea.  These are deadly mushrooms, the ones that have given wild mushrooms a bad rap as a food source.
This young specimen still has a closed cap, but you can see some of the volva, or full veil, on the right of the base of the stipe, that used to cover the entire mushroom before the stipe began elongating.   After I took the photo, I dug down and found the underground part of the volva that encapsulated the mushroom like an eggshell at an earlier stage of development.  I neglected to get a picture of that.  :-(

If you enlarge the photo by clicking on it, you can see flecks of the volva on the left side of the cap.

I took photos of a more mature specimen in which the cap had expanded a bit and the stipe had elongated even more.The slightly yellowish color of the cap and top of the stipe make me think that this might be A. bisporagera instead of A. phalloides, which is usually solid white.  But A.p. has some color variability and also some of the color on the cap of this one is probably just bruising.  In all practicality, it doesn't make too much difference, as both are deadly poisonous.  This website has good descriptions and photos.

Here you can see the annulus or ring around the stipe which is a remnant of the partial veil that covered the gills before the cap opened.  You can also see part of the volva at the base of the stipe where I pulled back part of the leaf litter.

As described here, most cases of deadly mushroom poisoning in North America are due to confusion of these 2 species of Amanita with the wonderfully edible padi straw mushroom.   The main reason is because Asian immigrants to North America are very familiar with collecting padi straw mushrooms from the wild and these poisonous Amanitas do not grow in the same habitat.  When they move to North America, they are not aware that poisonous Amanitas are common, so they pick the "impostor" padi straws without looking at them carefully.  If they had looked carefully, they would have seen a partial veil, which that is not present on the padi straws.  Normally, padi straws are collected when they are quite young; the partial veils of the Amanitas are hidden at this stage, so you have to look for it deliberately.  It is an easy difference to see - if you know to look for it.  Read here for an interesting account of surviving a poisoning that occurred this way.

Almost Tropical

I am in Georgia, visiting my Mother again.  I was a day late getting here because my flights out of Minnesota were canceled on Friday due to fog!  It has been so warm during the day that all the moisture in the air from melting snow condenses into heavy fog during the night.


It is unseasonably warm here, almost tropical, today.  There are daffodils blooming everywhere.  My friend, Nancy, and I went for a walk and I took my camera and long lens hoping to spot the great blue heron again in the park.  It wasn't there today; I'll try again tomorrow.  But it wasn't a complete wash for the camera as you can see from the photos below.

A lovely Eastern Bluebird on a cherry tree.

Many Japanese Magnolia trees are in full bloom.

This large Japanese Magnolia, also known as Magnolia liliiflora, is putting on an extravagant show.

Also blooming are the Camellias.

The fallen red petals keep their color for quite a while, often carpeting the ground beneath the shrub with gorgeous color for a week or more.

This bush is just starting to bloom and has only a few fallen flowers.

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Normally, I prefer single flowers, but I like how the the center of this type has tightly packed petals in multiple rosettes.

Now for something completely different ...

I love the name of this church.  The "Free For All Deliverance Church" - it doesn't get any better than that.  Oh, and did I mention that the church is located in the former Coca Cola bottling plant?

Plus they have this lovely yard art available to the side of the church .  The three wise men, not visible in this shot, are over next to two frogs playing golf just to the left of the mushrooms ...

Seeing Red

I'm in Georgia now, visiting my Mother for a bit.  Most of the summer, the weather in Georgia was monstrously hot and somewhat dry.  But now the weather is perfect with highs in the 70s and 80s and lows in the 40s and 50s.  We have been taking advantage of the warm, sunny days to go out to Sutton Park, a city park here in Elberton, to walk the trails.

The trails are smoothly paved, making navigation easy.  The occasional benches are perfect for stopping to observe the flora and fauna.

We spotted this beautiful Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida, loaded with clusters of red fruits.

Hard to resist photographing the red and green against the bright blue sky.

Flowering Dogwoods are understory trees that are native to this area.  Many birds eat the fruits.

This cluster of fruits is from a cluster of flowers surrounded by 4 showy white bracts that serve as the petals.  You can see the bud for next springs flower right next to the fruits.

Flowering Dogwoods are native to this region of the US.  Other Cornus spp. are found throughout temperate forests of the world, but this one is my favorite.  Its 3 inch white flowers open early in the spring, the red fruits are attractive in the late summer and autumn, and the autumn leaf colors are orange and red.  


We also saw many specimens of another favorite tree of mine - the Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora.  I don't have any photos of the trees to show you, but I do have shots of their cones with bright red seeds peeking out.

The 4-5 inch long cones are fuzzy and split open to reveal the bright red seeds.

Botanically speaking, these aren't really cones; they are fruits.  But they are commonly called cones because of their shape.  Makes sense to me!

The lovely red seeds are eaten by squirrels, turkeys, quail, opossums, other animals.

The Southern Magnolia is native to the southeastern US, but is cultivated in many parts of the world.  It grows to great heights (90ft, 27.5m), has glossy, evergreen leaves, and magnificent creamy white flowers in the summer.

Today is yet another lovely day; I'm sure we will make another trip to the park.  Wonder what we will see this time?