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urbpanI may have mentioned it before: identifying mushrooms is really difficult.
This group of mushrooms is a little too dry and old to try for a precise identification. I was almost sure upon looking at them, that they were honey mushrooms. Unfortunately calling something a "honey mushroom" is like designating a fellow person "an acquaintance." It unsatisfactorily settles the matter, without telling you much about them. According to David Aroroa in Mushrooms Demystified, "there is very little that can or cannot be said about the honey mushroom...with at least two distinct widespread variants" making up some 14 different recognized species in the complex. Species is a slippery designation among fungi. Suffice it to say, the group of mushrooms pictured is almost certainly in the genus Armillariella (formerly Armillaria). The fungus can be a symbiote, a parasite, or a saprophyte, and in this case seems to be a parasite on the roots of a cherry tree. This fungi complex includes the worst diseases of trees in California, as well as the mycelium often called the largest organism on earth, a four square mile patch of fungus living in the soil of eastern Oregon. Arora prounounces honey mushrooms "eminently edible" while the Simon and Schuster guide warns that the mushroom is toxic until cooked, and is too easily confused with nonedible species to risk eating.
This group of mushrooms is a little too dry and old to try for a precise identification. I was almost sure upon looking at them, that they were honey mushrooms. Unfortunately calling something a "honey mushroom" is like designating a fellow person "an acquaintance." It unsatisfactorily settles the matter, without telling you much about them. According to David Aroroa in Mushrooms Demystified, "there is very little that can or cannot be said about the honey mushroom...with at least two distinct widespread variants" making up some 14 different recognized species in the complex. Species is a slippery designation among fungi. Suffice it to say, the group of mushrooms pictured is almost certainly in the genus Armillariella (formerly Armillaria). The fungus can be a symbiote, a parasite, or a saprophyte, and in this case seems to be a parasite on the roots of a cherry tree. This fungi complex includes the worst diseases of trees in California, as well as the mycelium often called the largest organism on earth, a four square mile patch of fungus living in the soil of eastern Oregon. Arora prounounces honey mushrooms "eminently edible" while the Simon and Schuster guide warns that the mushroom is toxic until cooked, and is too easily confused with nonedible species to risk eating.
