Mushroom Hunt: Slimy Spike-Cap.

From Charly, who notes: Edible, but I never bothered to collect it so I have no personal experience with it. Strangely enough I have only seen two-three specimens this time around, both of them very young – one you have already seen in the picture besides a Larch bolete. Usually they are not particularly rare. Latin: Gomphidius glutinosus. Click for full size!

© Charly, all rights reserved.

Mushroom Hunt: False Chanterelle.

From Charly, who notes: I remember finding true chanterelle only a few times in my life around here, as a child, and only a few tiny specimens at that, but my parents told me they used to grow a lot here. Then they disappeared completely and I have not seen them for thirty years at all. They went from very common to very rare during my lifetime. These false chanterelles are not too common either. I have only seen this one specimen this year, and I only ever encounter a few each year. Latin: Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca. Click for full size!

© Charly, all rights reserved.

Mushroom Hunt: Rufous Milk Cap.

From Charly, who notes: A very common mushroom here and inedible one. There are a few species of the Lactarius genus around here, most inedible. But some years there is enough of Lactarius deliciosus – saffron milk cap, edible and very tasty – to be worth collecting. This time I only met the rufous.

A fun anecdote – I never collected milk caps, but I showed one of my friends in high school once how to recognize the L. deliciosus from the other common inedible species growing around here (it has orange milk and turns to green on bruised areas, whereas others have white milk), and his whole family started to collect them en masse in consequent years and they liked them very much. I did not even remember showing him until he thanked me a few years later. To my horror, because I am sure I never recommended anyone to actually collect mushrooms I do not have personal experience with. To trust a teenager who was just showing off with a trick learned from an atlas on mushrooms is not wise. But they are all still living 25 years later. Latin: Lactarius rufus. Click for full size!

© Charly, all rights reserved.