Has anyone ever found a mushroom IN a tree?

[Rob Hack]

For being half blind, I still have quite an ability for spotting mushrooms from a distance. My last trip out for Chanterelles I was coming down a steep hill and for some reason I glanced up and spotted a mushroom twenty feet up in a tree.

I stared at it, rubbed my eyes, stared some more and kept thinking "It must be a couple leaves or something" Finally I got a long stick and knocked it down. It disappeared out of view but it sure looked like a mushroom as it zipped by. I climbed down to where it fell and pulled it out of the hole it fell in. Sure enough, it was a common light purple mushroom with white gills. I couldn't imagine how it got up in that tree. There was no where it could have fell from to land there. It took me another five minutes to realize what a simple answer it was.....a bird (or a squirrel). Something had chewed all around the edges.

Still, that's the first one I ever found up in a tree. What are the odds? First it had to get stuck and secondly I'd actually have to spot it.

Maybe I am the mushroom whisperer....

[Rondayvous]

Sure, every time I walk in the woods.

[JOHNY]

All the time.

Around here, Red Squirrels take terrestrial mushrooms and wedge them  onto branches especially of Jack Pines. So when we are hunting for Ruffed Grouse, we frequently see Boletes hung in Jack Pines.  Red Squirrels love Boletes but probably other mushrooms too. They store them in "safe" places to come back and eat later.

[Dig]

I almost never see mushrooms, aside from polypore conks, very far off the forest floor.  Desert southwest hunting  area.