It’s been a rainy summer, so this year’s crop of forest fungus is spectacular. Why should wildflowers get all the glamor shots when the fruiting bodies of fungi are just as beautiful?
I don’t have a good field guide to mushrooms, but it didn’t take too much googling to identify this lovely white specimen as the Eastern Destroying Angel (Amanita bisporigera), closely related to the death cap mushroom beloved by mystery novelists and believed to have poisoned Roman Emperor Claudius, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and Pope Clement VII.
I think this jaunty yellow chap is another Amanita variety. While I paused to admire it, I did not invite it home for lunch.
I’ll tentatively identify this one as the old man of the woods, but mostly I like the texture of the cap among the leaf litter flanked by club moss.
The rest I don’t have names for, but they caught my attention for long enough to stop and take a picture.
I have no idea how your blog happened to open this morning, but I’m so glad it did! (I do have it on my desktop of my laptop, but I didn’t think I clicked it.
WOW, the variety and beauty of the fungi, and the vistas, and the energy, and the distance….Just WOW!
Amazingly beautiful pictures. It is so nice to view natural beauty after watching the chaos in our world. You have provided moments of peace. Thank you.