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Tuesday, October 03, 2006

yellow fungi


yellow fungi
Originally uploaded by LynchburgVirginia.
If you would like to read the curious story of this weird mushroom, found in our area click the image. They are poisionous yet people who have got deathly ill from them went back for seconds.

3 Comments:

At 1:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are several misleading things in this article. True, these mushrooms are the same color as Chanterelles, but to those who know what to look for they don't look anything alike.

First, as the article suggests Chanterelles don't have true gills, merely ridges. Also they are more of a light peachy orange, not the neon of Garish color of the jack-o-lantern. Chanterelles also have a pleasant fruity smell, whereas Jack-o-Lanterns have a rancid mushroom smell (I can't see how anyone would describe the fragrance as pleasant.)

Lasty, and most important Jack-o-lanterns always grow on wood. Chanterelles will always be growing in soil unattached to wood.

In short, once you've had an expert show you both mushrooms, it is easy to know the difference. In fact, Chanterelles are so unique looking that they are easily one of the safest mushrooms one could eat. It is not unlike blueberries... one would have to be insane to eat a random blue colored berry in the forest, unless one knew what a blueberry looked like first; however, once you know what a wild blueberry looked like you'd never mistake it for something else. Mushrooms are no more poisonous than plants. the rule here is simple... don't eat any wild food unless you are sure about what you are eating. That means not only knowing the edible, but knowing any look-alikes too.

 
At 4:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm a mushroom hunter from Northern Virginia who's come across both Jack-O-Lanterns and Chanterelles over the past year. Telling these two mushrooms apart can be very difficult if you haven't dealt with both first-hand. The Jacks I came across (shortly before last Halloween) appeared to come out of the ground but were really coming from buried wood; they were bright pumpkin orange and did have a pleasant orange-jasmine like aroma. The stoutness of the mushrooms and true, non-forking gills indicated they were Jacks, though it took hours of looking over the literature and websites to convince myself. Now, the chanterelle common to this area (Smooth Chanterelle) DOES have a near-neon orange color to it and a fruity aroma; however, there are hardly any 'gill' folds and the fungal body consists of large floppy lobes. The "classic" chanterelle is said to be more intermediate between the two forms and yellowish in color; the folds can look a lot like real gills but they should fork. I hope this helps.

 
At 7:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Jack O Lantern Mushroom! Pretty ugly looking, yet at the same time kind of beautiful in a wierd way.

Be Positive,
Jamie
Lynchburg Va #1 Website

 

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