After a busy season of collecting seeds and pressing plants, it was a pleasant change of pace to start the year’s mushroom collection last week.  We began at Kanaka Valley Preserve, an oak-woodland parcel where grassland and chaparral shrubland lie adjacent, with an abrupt transition between the two.  We collected in a shaded, grassy area where old stumps and fallen branches hosted a wide variety of mushrooms.

Our team doesn’t have much experience with mushroom ID, but armed with several books, many photos, and dried specimens, we are confident about our prospects.  If you, kind blog reader, have any insight, please comment!