Ah the Spring!  Hello to everyone out there.  This is my first post and hopefully it won't be my last.  I've been delaying the commencement of this blog for numerous reasons but I feel that I cannot keep entering the woods without having some way of sharing my discoveries with others.  I hope that this blog will be informative and--if I really do my job right--it'll make you want to go on a walk in the woods.  In case you were wondering, I am in no way an expert in mushroom identification and the ID's that I give to the mushrooms in this blog should not be taken as always correct, for they very well might not be.  Cheers!

Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) on Mt. Mansfield, VT.

March 19, 2012

My interest in the Fungal Kingdom positively mushroomed this past Fall and since that time I've been intently studying mushrooms and preparing myself for the resurgence of some delicious seasonal edibles.  This spring my interest is mainly focused on finding the legendary morel (morchella sp.)--a spring legacy and supposedly (as I have yet to taste one) one of the premier edible mushrooms in the world!  As this is my last semester of college I have had many opportunities (and a weekly landscape photography class) to slip away into some of the wilder and more unique areas of Chittenden, Addison, and Washington counties.  After waiting patiently through the winter, settling mostly for polypores and bracket fungi, our first fungal sign of Spring arrived on an unseasonably warm day in March during a photographic foray into the Green Mountain Audubon Center in Richmond, VT.

Sarcoscypha austriaca (Scarlet Cup)

A Rather Charismatic Scarlet Cup

 The "Scarlet Cup" is one of the early signs of Spring and seems to brighten up the end-of-winter landscape with its vivid color.