Another mushroom from Mayne Island. A patch with many mushrooms of the same species at various stages of development. A young one with roundish yellow cap and yellow stalk which is covered partially with white. An old one with folded cap exposing the gills.
Hi David - Based on what I can see, the first one appears to be Stropharia ambigua, and the second one Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca
How wrong I was! Since they were close together among about 20 mushrooms, I assumed they were of the same species. Another lesson learned. Thank you.
A good thing to keep in mind when starting with mushrooms is that there are thousands of species of mushrooms in this region, and more being discovered all the time. ~3000 named macrofungi species in BC and estimated 10,000 fungi species in BC. Always marvellous new things to learn :-)
Casual hikers may miss a lot of beautiful mushrooms. When I really looked for them for a week on Mayne, and discovered so many colourful specimens, I was like a child in a candy store. Even if it hurt my back, it was all worth it. And I made a point to do it again next fall. With what I have learned so far from the Forum, I will do it differently.
Ha-ha. Reading that reminded me of an assumption I used to make with ornamental cherry trees (planted, so a very different situation) - if I could tell the cultivar for two out of three grown together (say, if they still had some flowers and the other didn't), I would assume that the third would have been planted with them and would have been the same. That only works about half the time. It didn't even account for mistakes, where they were all supposed to be the same.
