Mushroom Road

August 25th. 2012. We’d had quite a bit of rain over the weeks preceding this visit to the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in Jones County, Georgia. We were leaving the NWR and driving northeast on Sugar Hill Road towards Hillsboro. Much of this road is shaded and has high embankments that stay moist with other areas in the refuge. The conditions had been perfect for mushrooms to grow.

 Our first sighting was this Pleurotus sp. growing on a tree trunk. It’s a gilled mushroom and is edible.

Amanita jacksonii (American Caesar’s mushroom) – a young by the side of the road, and 

half-opened mushrooms high on an embankment.

Another Amanita sp., possibly the Southern Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria var. persicina), from above, and a

closer view. It had a glossy cap as if someone had poured caramel sauce on it and then decorated it with the warts.

A polypore. The mushroom, the

Cap, showing the pores, and

the stem. Sometimes the topography of the stems is as fascinating as the caps and gills.

Another polypore. This one looked a little like a spaceship from a distance.

Up close, it looked like the surface of a planet.

A close view of the edge of the cap showing the pores again. I felt this mushroom and it had a spongy feel.

An orange mushroom that looked, superficially, like a chantarelle but which didn’t have distinct gills or pores but had an

underside that looked ‘powdery.’

A group of mushrooms belonging to Strobilomyces sp. related to the Old Man of the Woods mushroom (S. strobilaceus), possibly Strobilomyces confusus. This, also, is a

polyporous mushroom.

Next: The coral fungi on Sugar Hill Road

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Identification resources:

- University of Georgia, Department of Natural History: Georgia Basidiomycetes