Mushrooms

Here on the west coast, the rainy season has started. As I live in a rainforest, you can imagine how I get to see the rain and clouds almost everyday. The upside to all of those drizzly days is that they produce a wonderful variety of mushrooms. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know which mushroom is edible or poisonous but I do know that those people who do, keep their mushroom finds to themselves to ensure the fungi are not over-picked. These foragers make sure they hold their mushroom harvest in open net bags so that the spores can be knocked off and onto the forest floor to hopefully be spread for harvesting in following years. Perhaps one day I will take a mushroom foraging course and then I will know which fresh mushroom would go great in a risotto when I see it. Yum.

On a recent excursion with the kids, I came across a whole bunch of different mushrooms. As they have been a source of visual inspiration for me lately, I had to take a few pictures. Perhaps there are a few of you out there that know the names of these.