A little more rain and few more days will find a few members of the Sacramento Tracker Club eyes-to-the-ground hunting fungi in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

A mycology club from UC Davis will be leading us to search for the wily bolete, and other things. We should be able to reliably identify some more edibles by the end of the day.

You doing anything similar in your area?

to late in the year up here but heading over to the "mushroom club" at the University of Minnesota is on my list of thing to do.if nothing more i would just like to ID the ones i see when i'm canoeing up north.if you run into just right damp early fall weather the woods are full of all sorts of them.i have plenty of photos but limited knowledge of just what they are.i have no plans on eating any.

Post up what you find.

ON my ride today I saw a bunch of mushrooms poppinup!

Todd - at what elevation[s] did you see the wily fungi??

Thanks.

here's one with a survival angle.it's the Jack O'Lantern mushroom which is very toxic.


it looks like the Chanterelles mushroom which is said to be a real taste treat,i have never tried one,it grows on the ground while the Jack O' Lantern grows on wood,like the one in my photo.
the Jack is said to glow in the dark,hence the name.so if you crawl out of your bush shelter at nite looking for something to add to your rat stew and see a glowing mushroom on wood that looks like the high price dried one you saw in a gourmet food shop pass it by.

3400-3600ft

I`ll try to get pics tomororw if I can, it snowed and rained today.

Great! I think we are starting just under 4000 feet elevation east of Georgetown. Supposedly our local guide is prepared to make some elevation adjustments if the first spot does not pan out. [My hope is to be shown more than the one area I already know.]

First report - great day.

Drive until vehicles begin to fishtail on morning ice and snow in highway. Turn and drive back a few miles.

Park in volunteer fire station area per our local leader and retired fire guy. Cold, snow seasoning the ground here and there. A recent burn area - some stumps still smoking, lots of char, and drifts of burned duff. Fungi zero except one guy found some oyster mushrooms growing out from under a log.

Back to rendezvous. Help damsel in distress try to find her lost cell phone by backtracking. No phone but find four kinds of mushrooms. Abandon her after 15-20 minutes, when she could not remember any particular place she had been, to rejoin the group which has moved down the road.

Group drives to lower elevation and searches. Mushrooms of several kinds found, especially in leaf litter under oak trees [tan and canyon oak I think]. Damsel reports finding phone lying on deer trail after she followed her mother's lead in retracing their steps from where they started.

Restaurant back room rendezvous and ID session. Folks who gambled on lower elevations than any I saw found many more types of mushrooms. Group collected about 30 types overall.

I focused on edible fungi. Oyster, white chantrelle, deer, puffball, and "slippery Jack" 'shrooms.

Made some more contacts, learned about some more 'shrooming hot spots, and solidified some new relationships. I need to invest in the local bible, Mushrooms Demystified, and spend some time with it.

Pictures will be on the Yahoo Group for the Sacramento Tracker Club.

Also gathered more acorn for some culinary experiments.

Found a downed Sugar Pine and harvested some very green, very long needle clusters to make pine needle baskets in the next few weeks.

Excellent dweste, thanks for the update. Let us know how the acorns turn out.