Fungi Friday - Purple, Green and Orange Edible Mushrooms

Here's a few new edible mushrooms I have discovered this week for #fungifriday by @ewkaw

This purple mushroom is called Laccaria ochropurpurea. I just learned that these are actually edible.

The purple gills are a telltale sign of purple laccaria.

Another notable feature of this mushroom is that the gills attach to the stem.

The caps are usually tannish purple.

The stems are pretty tough and rough. The base is pretty bulbous as well.

Here's an example of an older purple laccaria. The caps flatten out and the gills peak out along the edges.

Here's what the gills look like on the older specimens.

They are best harvested around this size. You can really only eat the caps since the stems are really tough. The taste is very mild and the texture is fairly firm and chewy. This would go really well in a chili dish of sorts.

This is a tricky mushroom that has a few poisonous lookalikes so it is important to do spore prints. The spores of the edible purple laccaria are white, the poisonous lookalikes have brown spores. The white spores above indicate I have an edible one.

Next up we have a perfect specimen of green cracking russula aka russula virescens. It looks like a nice green donut from this angle and is about the size of one as well.

The cap is very delicate and breaks off in pieces if bent. This is why russula are often called brittlegills.

There are no poisonous lookalikes as this is a very unique looking mushroom. I've read that it can even be eaten raw, though I wouldn't advise it. Unfortunately this time I only found one, perhaps I'll find enough for a meal next time.

The chantrelles are still out. Plenty of them are growing under the hardwoods after a rain. Here you can see three stages of them.

I harvested a few for a meal, maybe these will go on fish or end up in a chicken gravy of some kind. I would post a few more mushrooms but I'll save it for next week. Happy #fungifriday

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