Funky Mushrooms

It rained all week right after we got back from Ohio. The combination of lower temperatures and extra moisture made the mushrooms all over our favorite park grow like crazy! By the next week, they were everywhere: in the woods, in the fields, in the brush; and were all shapes, sizes and colors. Here are some of the most interesting ones we saw on our daily disc golf excursions.

This enormous (for comparison, the blue disc golf disc next to it is about 8 inches across) red and orange mushroom was growing on the edge of the woods along the path from hole F to 14. First time I'd ever seen a red mushroom!

July 17

Two days later, we spotted more red mushrooms. These were smaller and looked like something out of a Super Mario Brothers video game!

July 19

It started getting a little drier out but the interesting mushrooms kept coming. This one was more orange than the photo shows. I think it might be a chicken mushroom. It was pretty big, about the size of my fist. 

July 20

These delicate mushrooms are really hard to capture on film. They're almost thin enough to be transparent and their centers are a sunny yellow. Even the stems are thin and dainty, even though the top is about 2 1/2 inches across. 

July 22

The little bubble-looking mushrooms, on left, caught our eye on July 28. The next day we were surprised to see how much they had grown, on right, and how different they looked just 24 hours later.

 

Honestly I don't know if this last one is even a mushroom but it was definitely interesting seeing it growing up out of the mulchy-forest-floor. It was tall, maybe 3 1/2 or 4 inches high, and as colorful as it looks. At first I thought it was alive - it sorts of looks like a worm!

July 29