June 8th-15th. I found these mushrooms quite by
accident. I had stepped off the trail to take photos of some seedpods and was
about to step back onto the trail when I realized I was about to step on some
mushrooms.
It’s easy to see why I almost stepped on them. They were the
same color as the soil around them. They blended right into their surroundings.
I photographed them on the 8th and, after identifying them,
photographed them again on the 15th of June to get better images of
the ‘gills/. It was cloudy on the 8th and sunny on the 15th;
the light conditions that are reflected in the different colors of the images.
Although, from one perspective, it’s disappointing to have these different colors
rather than a single set of images, it shows how different they look under
different light conditions.
It was just a small patch of mushrooms, about two to three
square feet in area. I didn’t know what they were but they looked like…
brown chanterelle-like mushrooms.
The caps were inverted or vase shaped and varied from…
almost smooth to…
relatively scaly in appearance.
The caps of the largest mushrooms were about 2 inches in
diameter; the stems tapered down to about 0.5 inches diameter at the base. Some
of the smaller mushrooms looked more like cyclinders. The caps were inverted or
vase-shaped. They were about 2 to 2.5 inches tall. The gill surface showed
almost no features; they had the most shallow of folds – if they could be
called folds. They were not fleshy like the yellow Chanterelles (Cantharellus
cibarius).
The task of identifying them presented a challenge. I had
seen the yellow Chanterelles (Cantharellus cibarius) in several locations and
these mushrooms looked similar in shape with , rather than gills, running down
the stem. but didn’t know, at that time, that there were Black Chanterelles. It
took a bit of ‘googling’ to finally identify these mushrooms as Craterellus
cornucopioides.
Recent DNA studies have shown that the three species - C. cornucopioides, C. fallax, and C. konradii – are the same species C. cornucopioides.
Black Chanterelles are considered to be delicious and hight prized by mushroom hunters. Luckily these mushrooms were in a state park where collection is forbidden and where they may be appreciated by all – if you can find them.
References:
- Mushroom
Expert: Craterellus cornucopioides
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