It’s late October and I really was expecting to have more mushroom photos to share. Last I checked the leaves are changing color and it’s raining. It’s definitely fall so where are the mushrooms? A few weeks ago I was so happy to see mushrooms sprouting up in my yard. There were a few different varieties growing in a large pile of willow bark that I was looking forward to and then something quite strange occurred – as you can see from the picture above – the mushrooms dried up and rotted.
My only guess is that the very dry summer (40+ days with no rain) and the lack of rain in early fall didn’t leave the best conditions for mushrooms to grow.
The only mushrooms that seemed to do well was a patch of inky caps (Coprinus). These are so fragile I was surprised to see them at all. By the time I noticed them their caps had mostly deteriorated into an inky mess so I’m not entirely sure what kind they were. They actually popped up a couple times over the last few weeks though I haven’t been lucky enough to catch them before they decided to digest themselves.
The weekend before last I went to the annual mushroom show hosted by the PSMS (Puget Sound Mycological Society) and took quite a few pictures. Over the next few weeks I’ll upload some of the pictures from the show since I don’t have much going on in my yard mushroom-wise.
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