Jeju Island Hedgehog mushrooms?

[brendan]

Ok, so I just came across these photos from November of 2018, before I was on this forum. I was visiting Korea, and my wife and I spent some time on Jeju Island, which if you haven't been, is definitely a trip worth taking. Seriously. If Americans knew of that place it would be swarming with us. Anyway, we went for a hike on Hala Mountain, which is in the island's center, and I found these growing on the trail. Not really sure what the trees were, possibly oak of some type mixed with others but there were people cultivating Shiitake's on that same mountainside at any rate. I was not able to find any resource in english that could help me identify mushrooms on Jeju Island, and eventually gave up trying to ID them. It was hard to let them go with all the "foolproof five" lists hedgehogs are on in the US but better safe than sorry of course.

 But the story doesn't end there. Within the spikes of one of the hedgehogs, I found what appeared to be another mushroom cap. You can see it in several of the photos, and I included a pic of it once removed, sadly at the time my camera phone was not up to the challenge of photographing something so small. I figure either A. It is growing on the "hedgehog" mushroom, or B. It grew up into the spikes, and got stuck in them, and when I plucked the "hedgehog" it remained stuck, and the stem snapped off.

Option B would be yet another good reason to look carefully at anything one eats haha. 

In fact I'm just now noticing that there are definitely more than one of the mysterious mushrooms on the mushrooms!

Here's one of the top of the cap

[GCn15]

Very cool. Definitely some kind of LBM that got fused with this Hedgehog.

[Dave W]

That's really cool! The little gray mushrooms are likely a parasitic species of Entoloma. Here's an example of something similar  https://mushroomobserver.org/249418?q=z0SQ . 

Some Entoloma mushrooms are poisonous.

The Hedgedogs are a species oh Hydnum. There are a few different names that have been applied to the white Hedgehog mushrooms, and ones found in Korea are apt to be a different species than what we find in NA... although not definitely so. 

Brendan, you should post this to Mushroom Observer... or, with your permission to use your photos I'll make the MO post. 

[brendan]

On 10/13/2019 at 10:45 AM, Dave W said:

That's really cool! The little gray mushrooms are likely a parasitic species of Entoloma. Here's an example of something similar  https://mushroomobserver.org/249418?q=z0SQ . 

Some Entoloma mushrooms are poisonous.

The Hedgedogs are a species oh Hydnum. There are a few different names that have been applied to the white Hedgehog mushrooms, and ones found in Korea are apt to be a different species than what we find in NA... although not definitely so. 

Brendan, you should post this to Mushroom Observer... or, with your permission to use your photos I'll make the MO post. 

Hey Dave, 

Sorry I've been very busy lately. That's very cool, I think you are correct about them being parasitic, lines up with what I remember better than the possibility of stems snapping off. I would be honored if you want to post the photos to Mushroom observer, right now I probably won't get around to it for a while so that would be absolutely fine. If there's any other information I can provide let me know!

[Dave W]

Here's the MO post for the Entoloma mushroom growing on the Hedgehog.  https://mushroomobserver.org/389332  Check the link form time to time, as the observation may attract some attention.