November rain makes a wonderful mushroom hike!

This last hike was a wonderland of mushrooms. So like usual I was taking pictures and samples. I had found a patch of mushrooms, so I was on my hands and knees covered in mud taking pictures and digging around in the leaves.  Happy in my little mushroom world. I suddenly felt like I was being watched, I glanced over my shoulder, looked over there was a class of about 30 kids and a teacher starring at me.  The teacher was taking a pictures.  I had to laugh, Now I know how the deer feel when we sneak up on them to take a picture! Her curiosity finally came over her and she asked what I was doing.  Satisfied with my quest for science in the mycological world they carried on.

It was good mushroom hunting this month.

We had a bit of rain and cold now everything is fall like and beautiful. The leaves are all falling down so the mycelia have lots to munch on.

Malibu Creek is awesome during the week in the winter. Usually few people venture out. The less people the more wildlife.  We find something new every time we hike.

I am still learning about all the mushrooms so I have not identified all of them, but here are some of the ones we came across.

  Blue Mycena 

Hypomyces Chrysospermus (Bolete Mold on bolete)

Malibu Creek 11/11/11

Beautiful Day last Friday. We took a stroll up through the trail north off Mulholland Highway. We have had rain activity this weekend. It was Veteran's Day Friday so we decided to stick to the less populated side of the park. I have taken a mental note not to go diving into the leaves to check out mushrooms and perspective mushroom "bumps". Last year I dove into a deep pile of leaves to get the perfect shot of a mushroom. A few minutes later I had my very first case of Poison Oak. This year I plan on being just as excited but not as careless.

We found this bunch of Boletus.
They are all so alike, I think it is Smiths Boletus, but it also looks like the Bay Boletus.

We were hoping the rain would start up as we were hiking. But no such luck this week. Last weekend we had a full rain storm while hiking.

Here is another species from Family Collybia