Blue Spine

 




Remember that line of fungus from two days ago? The picture above is a closer view of one of the same kind. It was on the other side of the trail. Does it look blue to you? It did to me too. That's an unusual color for a mushroom/fungus, so I thought it might be easy to ID. Yet, I didn't want to get my hopes up because I'm not very good with mushroom identification. I mostly look at pictures in the books.




Here it is again. You can see that it has that blue velvety top, no gills, a shape like a funnel, and a short stalk. So I went hunting in the books. I found the exact match! It's the Blue Spine, Hydnellum caeruleum. Much to my surprise, it's a "tooth fungus." You would think that I would take time to look more closely at these fungi, right. But I don't seem to. I always hate to pluck, cut, break them up, lest someone else not get to enjoy them. Actually this is a silly attitude when it comes to fungi. It's not quite the same as picking wildflowers. If I am so concerned, I could look for one that's farther from the trail. Well, back to the identification.




A tooth fungus has teeth that hang down from the underside. All the ones that I knew about before this are big globs of things that hang on trees. Maybe I'll find my pics and show you some another day. But, I discovered that one of my pictures has a good enough focus to verify the teeth.



You can really see the teeth where that hole has been knocked in the body. It's labeled as inedible, but not poisonous, whatever that means. Probably tough and tasteless.