Wild Wednesday ~ Mushrooms

A couple of weeks ago, I found this weird mass of mushrooms growing next to our driveway.

Because it was near the house, I could run inside and grab my mushroom i.d. book, rather than my usual "I'll just try to remember what it looked like and look it up later" routine.

And I actually started with the key in the guide, and then, once I got to family Lepiotaceae, cheated and flipped through the pictures till I found a good match, Leucocorinus caepestipes. Which is a mouthful; don't ask me how to say it. And there doesn't appear to be a common name.

Learning a new facet of the natural world is always a challenge because each category has its own unique vocabulary. Mycology was not part of our Master Naturalist training, so I'm starting from scratch, and since my mushroom book is big and heavy and I don't travel with a mushroom basket, I rarely have both book and specimen in the same place, so the education has been slow.

But, with the rain that has come to Maine in recent weeks, I've seen more mushrooms popping up in the woods, and I've been in need of a focus to get me outside and naturalizing, so maybe I'll start toting the mushroom book into the woods, and learn more about these very fun guys.