Wild Harvest Life - Winter Family in PNW

While walking through the forest, I noticed a small, pale mushroom emerging from the ground. At first, it looked almost like a round white egg with patches of yellow showing through its outer covering. When I returned to look more closely, the mushroom had opened into a broad cap. Its appearance had changed so much that someone seeing only one stage might not realize that the photographs showed the same mushroom at different stages of growth. Based on the features visible in these images, this appears to belong to the genus Amanita . However, because the mushroom was already damaged and its entire stem base was not visible, I am identifying it only as an Amanita species ( Amanita sp.) , not as a particular species. That distinction is important. A photograph—especially one that does not show the complete mushroom—is rarely enough to confirm an exact wild mushroom identification. This young mushroom appeared as a pale, rounded button with yellow patches. Its complete stem base was hidd...

Have you ever walked past a large, woody mushroom growing from an old log and wondered what it was? At first glance, this mushroom looked more like a piece of weathered wood than something living. Its upper surface was dark, firm, and marked with broad rings that seemed to record years of growth. But when I looked underneath, I found something completely different. The underside was pale and smooth, almost like a blank canvas. And that is where the story becomes interesting. A Mushroom That Looks More Like Wood Than Food Artist’s Conk belongs to the Ganoderma applanatum group , a group of perennial bracket fungi that grow from logs, stumps, and sometimes wounded living trees. The mushroom in my photograph was growing from an old log in the Pacific Northwest. Its upper surface was dark gray-brown, deeply zoned, and extremely hard. A pale growing edge was still visible around part of the mushroom. Unlike soft culinary mushrooms, Artist’s Conk is far too woody and tough to slice a...