Fairly new mushroom hunter in central Massachusetts. I'm pretty confident about most of these, but an expert opinion is always welcome.
Chanterelles. Found them growing in a pretty mixed forest, containing maple, oak, hemlock, and hickory with a couple pines, birches, and ashes tossed in. They appear to be growing on soil, but there's so much dead wood on my mushrooming hill that I can't rule out the possibility that they were on some long-burried dead log. I've found what appears to be 3 types. Type 1 is a buttery yellow, with caps approximately 3 - 7 cm wide and somewhat flute shaped and it appears to have the pseudo gills. The stems are all over the map in terms of length and shape, but tend to be the same color as the cap on the outside and whtie on the inside. They're also fiberous and pull apart like fluffy string cheese. I suspect it's C. cibarius or something similar. Type 2 has basically the same size and morphology as type 1, but is more orange in color. Type 3 is much smaller than type 1 or 2, the caps of the very biggest may be 2 - 3 cm across, and they're a much more vivid orange. I have photos of types 1 and 2, but I can't get a decent pic of the tiny guys.
Type 1 on the ground. The knife used for scale is 10 cm long.
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Type 1 closer view
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Type 1 bisected
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Type 1 closeup of underside
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Type 2 on ground
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Type 2, closeup of underside
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Type 1 and 2 side by side
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Lobster mushrooms: these guys are found pretty randomly distributed amonst the leaf litter, though some areas seem to be more heavily effected than others. They're uniformly coated with a slightly textured orange/red coating (sometimes redder in patches) that seems to have smoothed out the features of the gills. When cut, the interior is white, and damned if they don't smell faintly like lobster shells.
My biggest question about the lobsters is, how good are they to eat? I'm always concerned they may be derived from a toxic Russula (the woods around here are FULL of red-capped Russulas, but also full of corrugated and volumenous latex milkys)
Lobster on the ground
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Lobster bisected. Sorry the flash washed it out.
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How'd I do on my ID's?
I've also found a sulfur shelf (big shelves, 30+ cm across, concentric orange banded top, porous sulfury yellow bottom, smells like oranges) growing out of a dead log. I've read that sulfur shelves might be unsafe when growing on dead wood. Is there validity to this statement?
Thanks muchly.