October 17th, 2017

After I returned from Scotland it was quite busy at work for several weeks. Than it was time to do some preserves for winter so I did not have too much time to visit trails.

Weather was quite hot and humid. Walking through woods was not really overly pleasant and mushrooms seemed to be totally absent. I found some traces of old honey mushrooms indicating that I missed them this year. I am not really disappointed since honey shrooms are not on my list of favorites. Maitake is and it seems that I missed them completely, too.

Finally, a weekend for mushrooming came. In some areas of the deciduous woods it seemed that nothing changed and it was hard to spot even traces of mushrooms. On the logs there was several clusters of oyster mushrooms, but all of them were too old to be used in kitchen.


In other areas, mainly under maple, there was the whole big crop of blewitts. Definitely mushroom high on my list of edibles.

This is a good opportunity to demonstrate several additional observation regarding this mushroom.

• Some of the blewitts are quite light , almost white, especially if they are still deep under litter


• Frequently cap has notches and waves


• Young specimens have inrolled cap margin; mature specimens flatten out and margin obtains definite ring-like zone (starts at about 3-4 mm and grows as mushroom matures) that with time becomes almost translucent.


• Mature specimens sometimes become funnel shaped, with deep tan, almost brown colors on the cap


• The stalk is quite short and frequently bulges at the bottom. Exceptionally in very deep litter stalk will become elongated


• They tend to grow in fairy rings or partial fairy rings

Some illustrative examples are shown in the gallery.

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