Les

the voynich manuscript and nodding my head in agreement

latin name: Fistulina Hepatica

This guy!!! Love this guy!!! He's the first edible fungi I ever ate and he tastes like shit. Awful texture, equally bad taste, like if sour old fruit was a mushroom. But it looks super cool! These pictures are of rather young specimens, but this mushroom looks fascinating through its entire growth cycle. When young, it looks like you can see in these pictures. Squishy, a very nice red colour, and excretes this sticky red liquid that looks pretty much exactly like blood. If you were to cut it, it would bleed a lot of this, and you'd also see some white "marbling" that looks exactly like really good beef. The most incredible thing about this fungus is how similar it looks to beef; really its a shame that it doesn't taste as good, too.

Older specimens maintain this beefy look, and become tougher and, i guess, a little more like beef jerky. Very old, decomposing specimens become darker and floppy, very similar to a cow's tongue. Hence, the name "Ox Tongue"!

I actually took these pictures of the exact same tree where I first found this mushroom, last year! I might share some pictures of that find, alongside what it looks like when cut/cooked.

Here are the pictures! It's pretty incredible how much it looks like meat, right? It really is a shame that it really doesn't taste good at all.

latin name: Fistulina Hepatica

This guy!!! Love this guy!!! He's the first edible fungi I ever ate and he tastes like shit. Awful texture, equally bad taste, like if sour old fruit was a mushroom. But it looks super cool! These pictures are of rather young specimens, but this mushroom looks fascinating through its entire growth cycle. When young, it looks like you can see in these pictures. Squishy, a very nice red colour, and excretes this sticky red liquid that looks pretty much exactly like blood. If you were to cut it, it would bleed a lot of this, and you'd also see some white "marbling" that looks exactly like really good beef. The most incredible thing about this fungus is how similar it looks to beef; really its a shame that it doesn't taste as good, too.

Older specimens maintain this beefy look, and become tougher and, i guess, a little more like beef jerky. Very old, decomposing specimens become darker and floppy, very similar to a cow's tongue. Hence, the name "Ox Tongue"!

I actually took these pictures of the exact same tree where I first found this mushroom, last year! I might share some pictures of that find, alongside what it looks like when cut/cooked.

latin name: Xerocomellus chrysenteron

I went on my first mushroom-focused forest walk of the year today, and found a bunch of cool stuff! I'll be posting it through the week, and then next week i'll head out to the forest and do it all over again.

This is the red-cracked bolete (I THINK! I AM NOT 100% ON PRACTICALLY ANY OF MY IDENTIFICATIONS!) If you look up this mushroom, you'll find similar-looking pictures except the mushroom is much larger and has visible cracks and roughness across its cap. There were TONS of those near where i took these pictures, but I decided to snap only the young, pretty specemins because beauty is more important than accuracy. Anyway these mushrooms are edible, but people tend not to like them because they get squishy when they mature. Also, they mainly grow near water so they can get suuuper squishy. If you find one with good texture, they apparantly taste almost identical to the penny bun, a.k.a. the cep. I found at least 50 of these, mostly old and falling apart, in a very shaded area right next to a lake. Perfect mushroom conditions, so not that surprising to see a huge outbreak.

I forgot I took these, so here you go!