Halloween Mushrooms
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Searching for Halloween mushrooms is a fun way to spend a sunny fall afternoon in the woods.
As you walk down the trail, keep your eyes alert for three distinct species.
The top picture shows the Dead Man's Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha), mushrooms worthy of any Halloween tale.
It's a saprotrophic fungus found on dead trees and trunks around the United States. As they age, they turn a darker color, like the specimen in the picture.
They end of looking like knobby fingers ready to grab anyone who might seek a seat on a stump in the woods.
 
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Its cup shape contrasts with the common cap and stem conception of a mushroom.
Cup mushrooms belong to a class of fungi formally called Ascomycetes. They are also known as sac fungi, because their spores are stored in tiny sacs, collectively called asci.
Truffles and morels are two popular Ascomycetes mushrooms.
Orange Cup mushrooms are a stem less variety of cup mushrooms. Like most, they are relatively small and grow in clusters on the sides of trails and dirt roads in most forested areas of the United States. The Orange Cup in the picture is the size of a nickel.
Taking a few steps off the trail into the forest will help with locating both ghosts and ghost looking mushrooms.
The third mushroom picture shows a small jelly mushroom called Pseudohydnum gelatinosum.
They grow on the floors of conifer forests and their translucent stem and half cap stand out against the usual green and brown background.
If anything, they are friendly ghosts, often growing next to edible mushrooms such as chanterelles.
Neither species is considered poisonous, however, the rule of wild mushrooms still applies. Look, touch, photograph and think of them as Halloween decorations rather than Halloween candy.
© 2007-2011. Patricia A. Michaels. All Rights Reserved.