Stanford Dish walk 1/6/18
Before heading out, I searched for "stanford dish mushrooms" to get an idea of what we might see and found Robert Siegel's photos of fungi at the Dish. (Thx, Robert!)
It'd rained earlier in the week and the weather was cool, so I was optimistic.
I was especially curious about the fungus in Siegel's "When fungi mimic scat". I hadn't paid attention to mushrooms of that form before.
At the top of the Dish trail, I saw something that looked like horse poop under an oak by the trail. I picked up a piece. It had a vaguely organic structure, but then I became concerned it might actually be poop, so I moved on :)
A little further, I saw another pile and then another, all under oak. This seemed like too much of a coincidence - hi, Pisolithus 👋🍄
I also saw some clusters of mushrooms with orange caps and white stipes (Leratiomyces ceres?) growing in the mulch around young oak trees.
Descending, I saw a mushroom with a maroon cap the size of my hand and yellow pores emerging at the base of an oak tree! It looked like Suillus, but the pores were pale. Scanning for more, I saw another twice the size!
Researching my finds later, I learned Pisolithus is symbiotic and an ingredient in Fungi Perfecti's MycoGrow. The fungus looks unconventional, but it's a beneficial member of the garden :)