365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Thursday, November 10, 2022
Mushroom Hunting
Day 28: Even if I could identify this mushroom and it turned out to be "edible and choice," I would be hard pressed to find enough of them to fill a teaspoon. This has been without a doubt the worst mushrooming season in the fifty-plus years I've been gathering them. We've had heat, we've had dry...and when the rains finaly did come, they fell in a 'shroom-shattering torrent, had there been any 'shrooms to shatter. I have not seen a Shaggymane. I have not found a single Chanterelle. My yard should be full of poisonous Stropharias, wormy green-staining Suilllus, antler-like "Blah Coral" and digestion-disturbing Russulas. There is nothing, save a dozen or so examples of this minuscule species. If, as I often hypothesize, fungus makes the world go 'round, we're in dire straits.
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