Opening Your Eyes to Fungi
August 31, 2009 at 5:00 am 5 comments
Earlier this year, I ran across a wonderful quote by Alexander Graham Bell:
We are all too much inclined to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all around us, and right at our very feet, that we have never seen; because we have never really looked.
Bell’s thoughts were particularly fitting a few weeks ago when Tony Airaghi and I hiked the 0.6 miles to the giant Keffer Oak. We brought along a copy of the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. With our eyes on the lookout, this section of trail– mind you a section I have done numerous times before– unveiled a whole other world. We found mushrooms all around us, sometimes right at our very feet.
 Possible Chrome Footed Bolete |
 Possible Chanterelle |
 Possible Yellow Unicorn Entoloma |
 Some Kind of Cup Mushroom |
 Possible Walnut Mycena Mushroom |
 Possible Emetic Russula |
 Possible Spindle Shaped Yellow Coral |
 Possible Tacky Green Russula |
We found so many mushrooms, in fact, our journey to the Keffer Oak was incredibly slow. Every few steps, we spotted another specimen and began flipping through the field guide again.
Tony Looking Up More Mushrooms
It took us well over an hour to make it to the tree. Where, with our eyes calibrated for fungus, we discovered yet another mushroom– this one growing right on the giant oak. : )
Tony with Mushroom Growing on Keffer Oak
Mushroom on Keffer Oak
With all these new discoveries on a familiar section of trail, I have to applaud Alexander Graham Bell. When it came to fungus, I was all too inclined to walk this section with my eyes shut.
More pictures of our mushroom discoveries and the hike to Keffer Oak can be found on my Flickr site.
P.S. Do not eat anything based on my photo captions. We are beginners and have very little confidence in our identifications!
| Appalachian Trail – Keffer Oak
Length: 1.2 miles round trip Elevation Gain: There is a brief hill near the beginning of the trail, but nothing too scary. Driving and Parking: The roads are all paved and there is a small gravel parking lot at the VA-630 trailhead. Directions from Blacksburg, VA Turn right on VA-629 |
Entry filed under: Appalachian Trail, Fungus, Hiking, Keffer Oak, Tony Airaghi.
TGAW 
1.
Anne | August 31, 2009 at 10:42 am
I was going to make a comment “with all these probablys, please don’t try to eat one”. You beat me to it.
2.
Anne | August 31, 2009 at 10:44 am
Not probablys, possibles.
3.
geekhiker | August 31, 2009 at 2:17 pm
There’s a course up in Pt. Reyes where people can go out with a mushroom expert and sample the edibles. Apparently it takes years of training to reach that point…
4.
tgaw | August 31, 2009 at 2:23 pm
@geekhiker– I would TOTALLY love a course like that!
@Anne – You don’t have to worry about someone with emetophobia in their past haphazardly eating mushrooms. I know what they could do. 🙂
5. Wildflowers at Keffer Oak « TGAW | September 2, 2009 at 5:03 am
[…] 2, 2009 Tony Airaghi and I may have been focused on mushrooms near Keffer Oak, but it was hard to ignore the summer wildflowers. Here are some of my favorite shots. So much to […]