Late Summer Colors in the Woods

I did take a hike yesterday, but wanted to share about the quilt show then, so I saved these pictures for tonight.

First of all, green is a color. And I love it when the woods are green. I've been hiking a lot in the brown months over the last few years, so I want to be adamant about how much I love the green woods.

Not by planning, but it just happened that I got an array of primary-colored mushrooms.

Red is the Apple Bolete, or Frost's Bolete, Exsudoporus frostii. I looked back in the blog and I last saw a bunch of these in 2015. "Apple" should be easy enough to remember. They sure look like someone dropped an apple in the leaves.

If you uncover the stem, you can see that the underside of the cap is convex. It has pores not gills. That easily tells you it's a bolete. And the stem is striped/striated. It will get downright grooved as it ages.

Moving along to yellow, these are Honey Mushrooms, Armillaria mellea. They are supposedly very edible, but I have not tried them. I should... there's not much you can mistake for them.

Blue is iffy. Maybe it's purple. You'd think something that looks so distinctive would be easy to identify. Nope- there are lots of choices. Well, it may be Laccaria ochrepurpurea, Purple Laccaria. That word "ochre-purpurea" should tell you it can vary in color from a yellow-brown to purple.

I did remember to take a picture of the gills. Still not enough info, although it allowed me to eliminate a few possibilities.

For real blue, believe it or not there were a few late-blooming harebells, Campanula rotundifolia. Why "round-leaved" you ask, when the leaves are clearly narrow straps? The first true leaves that appear near the ground in spring are round. That was a nice colorful surprise.

I reported these miles yesterday.

I tried hard to stay on track with getting things done today. Did pretty well. I need to make a master list for September and then stick with it. Several deadlines coming right up. For some reason, I have a sore hip. Hope that shapes up soon!

See Frost's Bolete 2015