Here are some early spring finds for this #mushroommonday
Look at this crazy looking black brain goo. This is Exidia glandulosa with a common name of black witch's butter or black jelly roll.
This stuff like most jelly fungi is actually edible. It has basically no taste to it but it will absorb spices well for use in ramen soup. I usually collect enough of this stuff then dry it in a mason jar and when I want to use it for soup I just drop they dried out crispy flakes of it into the soup and it puffs up to full size again while retaining the spices of the soup.
Here is a similar jelly fungi called Exidia recisa aka amber jelly roll. Again this slime fungi has no taste but it will absorb spices and works perfectly in soups.
I usually find amber jelly roll on broken hardwood branches that lay on the forest floor. If you go out right after a rain and look at the broken branches you will find all sort of this stuff. Simply harvest it then dry it out for use later.
There are still some spots of snow in the shade here. Peaking out of the snow is some year-round turkeytail aka Trametes versicolor.
Turkeytail is a good medicinal that has anticancer properties. You can boil them, powder them or soak them in alcohol to make a tincture to get their medicinal properties. In terms of taste they have no culinary use as they taste just like wood, so for tea I usually boil it with some kind of herbal tea to hide the wood taste.
Here is a similar looking mushroom to turkeytail. I believe this is Stereum
hirsutum aka false turkeytail which tends to be orange and brown and more crinkly with a smooth undersurface. These have no medicinal or culinary properties but I often find jelly fungi growing off false turkeytail so I usually check them after a rain just in case.
Here is a parasitic Nectria fungi called orange canker fungi. It is bad for trees but the bright color really stands out early in the spring. To get rid of it you have to basically cut it off the tree.
Here is some kind of strange crust fungi that is feeding off a dead tree that fell over. Some of these crust fungi can have brilliant orange and purple colors that can be used in dyes, but this one is quite dull and colorless.
This parchment looking fungi is called toothed crust fungi with a Latin name of Basidioradulum radula. There are no known culinary or medicinal qualities to this fungi but it is important in breaking down dead branches on the forest floor. Sometimes you can peel it off the branches like paper, so there might be some form of artistic use for this as there are often large patches of it growing on dead trees.
That's all the early spring finds for now, hopefully this year will be good for foraging edibles like morels. Thanks for looking and happy #mushroommonday