Mushroom season

Photo by Lee Lageschulte

By Diane Hettrick

Lee sent this photo of an exuberant growth of mushrooms growing around a section of a tree trunk. 

Photo by Pam Cross

This is mushroom season in the area. I have one section of lawn which is under a couple of fruit trees and it always gets mushrooms. The thing that surprised me is that it's not always the same variety.

I usually have the kind in Pam's photo and they look exactly like the dead leaves from the fruit trees. 

And they all look like the rotten pears that the squirrels and raccoons and birds and rabbits left behind. I never walk on that part of the lawn.

Photo by Jon Ann Cruver

But one year I had the ruffled mushrooms that grow in a fan from the ground, and another year I had a few of the fairy mushrooms like the one in Jon Ann's photo that look like a pixy should be sitting under them.

I used to get the plain tan ones and they are apparently not poisonous because my mother-in-law used to pick them from the ground and eat them.

Photo by Jon Ann Cruver

They hardly last a day. They appear and the next day they have changed shape, somewhat like the one in Jon Ann's second photo, and the next day they are gone.

The Puget Sound Mycological Society has information on their webpage and on their Facebook page.