Table 1 including Chicken of the Woods (Yellow on right end) and Hen of the Woods (Gray at far end) both of which are edible

We had a successful mushroom hike on Sunday at Katherine Humphrey’s farm, as measured by the two tables full of different mushrooms, and the wonderful stories about each type provided by Dr. Randy Weidner of Bath NY and the Rochester Area Mycological Association.

Table 2 included some poisonous mushrooms which we were discouraged from trying.

Our group included many mushroom hunters taking advantage of the beautiful weather and the expert advice on identifying mushrooms.  We split into two groups with the climbers walking the perimeter of the farm and enjoying the trees and the views and the mushrooms about equally.  The naturalists spread out in the woods and went on their way individually or in pairs. with a resulting larger collection of mushrooms.

Following the hike, we enjoyed learning about the different mushrooms.  Randy showed us examples where cutting open the mushroom helps with the identification. One mushroom turned pink at the top of the stem and blue at the bottom when it was cut open – quite pretty.

A social on Katherine’s lawn completed a very pleasant hike to end our 2016 Summer season of hikes.  Our thanks to Randy and Katherine and to Douglas Kostyk for recording the sights.

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