Mushroom Monday - False Alarm

Here is a false alarm for this #mushroommonday

My wife noticed a big patch of orange from the car window.

We stopped and got out hoping to see chicken of the woods.

But instead of chicken we found some dastardly poisonous jackolantern mushrooms.

These jacks always cause a false alarm in the fall when chicken of the woods comes out. They are the same color but chicken has no gills and usually grows from stumps or the sides of trees.

The only interesting thing about jackolantern mushrooms is the fact that they have a faint green glow to them in the dark.

Some people get poisoned every year thinking they are huge chanterelles or chicken of the woods. They end up needing to get their stomach pumped to purge the poison.

I noticed some strange white mold growing in the gills. It almost tricked me into thinking they might be lactarius mushrooms of some kind.

Now for a black footed polypore.

These are technically edible when young but don't taste like much and are really tough when old. Here you can see why they call it the black footed polypore.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll find chicken of the woods this year.