(upbeat music) - Thank you for joining us for Digging Deeper with Backyard Farmer.

We take a subject , we dig into it in depth.

And today Kyle is going to dig after all those shrooms in the landscape and the trees and all those places where those of us who really are wanting a Morel are gonna have to try to figure out what else to eat perhaps, right?

- Yes, perhaps.

And again, always, always have to be mindful about eating mushrooms that you find in the landscape unless you are 100% sure.

And have the experience and the expertise.

It's really recommended not to eat anything that you find while out foraging.

Just because there are a lot of lookalikes and some of them can be Some of them can be quite toxic.

So, Always be careful.

- Some of them can be toxic enough to go belly up.

- There are a few, luckily not in Nebraska.

We don't have a ton of those, but we certainly have those that will cause, we'll say gastrointestinal distress - In other words, worse than the flu.

- Yes, Yep.

- So let's start with your mask.

Can you identify the mushrooms on your mask?

- Well.

- Sort of hilarious.

- Yeah, There's a few of a few different ones on here.

I have the, We have an oyster mushroom and then some boletes as well.

And it kind of, there we go.

So, yellow one here is one of our kind of standard standard oyster mushrooms and bolete, kind of bolete class Right, right Over here.

Is what we're looking at.

And one of, one of these, down here is more like one of our agarics and so the agarics those do tend to be some of our some of our more, more poisonous ones.

And so there is kind of a general rule of thumb that if you do see, do see mushrooms with red caps when you're out for a foraging or anything like that you probably just want to stay clear of them.

Again, like I said, they're not not the most common in Nebraska and there are some edible mushrooms with red caps.

However, some of the most poisonous mushrooms do tend to do tend to have those red caps too.so.. - Excellent.

So we want to invite our audience of course to comment and tell us what you think about this segment.

Send us all of your cool information because Kyle is going to do an excellent job of starting with ID, right?

Is that we're going to start tonight since you also brought lots of other props and I know you sent some great pictures.

- Yeah, no, we, yeah.

We certainly can.

See I really, when, when thinking about mushroom ID we want to take a lot of pictures.

And so there are a few different things to a few different things, things that we would like to look for whenever we are looking at at mushrooms.

And so, first is, are there, where is the mushroom growing?

Is it growing in the lawn?

Is it growing on a tree?

You know, where really, where are we seeing it?

That's one thing to keep in mind.

And then, the next thing we often want to think about is Are there, is there a central stem to this mushroom?

And so again, that can help differentiate Some of our polypores from our more standard, standard mushrooms.

And then once we've decided whether once we've decided that there is a central stem or what are the what is the underside of the cap look like?

Do we have.

Do have some nice gills, like on on this one here?

Or is it more, more pores?

And so again, the, the Guild mushrooms, here we go.

A lot of, a lot of different types of mushrooms do have, do have gills.

The one that I'm holding up right now is this is a Lapiota or in the genius Lapiota one of our common parasol mushrooms.

It is fairly dried, but you can really see those gills kind of all the way throughout.

And now compare that to this other one.

And this is a polypore mushroom.

This is actually a Turkey tail is the common name for it.

But if we zoom in we can really see that as there's just a whole bunch of tiny tiny pores on the underside of it.

You may also get some larger holes kind of like kind of like we were seeing on this because in addition to people a lot of other things eat mushrooms too.

There's a lot of insects that do other animals that eat them.

Deer are, are very prolific mushroom eaters as well.

- Well, and I know the one with the gills if you buy beautiful big mushrooms at the grocery store and it's tuff, those are typically something that has the gills.

- Yep.

They are.

And yeah, and I know everybody always always thinks about the, Oh, I'm trying to blink on - Pardon.

Yeah, on the buttons or the, the big ones and yep.

And they, they do have nice gills underneath them.

But one of the things with those mushrooms with gills you want to be, when you're cleaning them a lot of stuff can get caught up in those gills too.

And so again, a lot of, a lot of other fungi, a lot of insects just a lot of, a lot of soil, a lot of dirt.

So when cleaning them, always a good idea just to take maybe a damp paper towel and kind of dab underneath those to try to get as much of the excess stuff out from those gills as possible.

Cause they can, can really impact the flavor on occasion.

- Cool.

All right.

So what else did you bring?

And then we'll go to your picture.

- All right.

Well, again, so have just a few, a few dried ones.

I went out, went out three different times foraging within the last couple of days.

I, I couldn't find anything part of this may have been the fact that I had a 15 month old toddler at my heels and she wasn't moving the quickest either.

So, but luckily we can, we can preserve a lot of mushrooms.

And so I, I did, did bring some of.. some older ones that we had.

Theyúre right here.

I'll go ahead and pull it up.

One of our, one of our more prized mushrooms.

And I apologize for the color.

when this was collected it was bright orange, bright orange and it was growing about 10 feet up a tree which is very typical of our chicken of the woods fungi or hen of the woods fungi very, very tasty if you are, or if you are out, out eating them.

And some of the other, another one that I had brought out this one was also collected off of a tree but this is a trim meteors, in the genius trim meteor but it was kind of bright red.

And this is the, this is the top side of it.

And then again, if we look at the look at the bottom side and this is going to be tough to see but this is another one of our polypore, polypore mushrooms.

And so just a whole bunch of little tubes in the bottom side of that.

And let's see, another one that this was one that was found on a actually growing out of an Apple tree stump but this is a Turkey tail fungus.

And so I have I have two different types of Turkey tails here.

Again, Turkey tail is one of the, one of the common names for it, but there can really be a really be a difference and in color variation.

Sometimes they're kind of this bright bright red and oranges and things like that.

In other cases like we have on the smaller one it's almost you know, a lot of, a lot more grays and almost some blues that were seen that were seen as well.

But again, when, when fresh I've, I've said this a few times.

Pathologists aren't the greatest at naming things.

And the same kind of goes for a lot of my mushroom experts as well.

They look like a Turkey tail and - They do actually - and there's even kind of a, a small, you can even feel some some slots, small hairs on the, on the tip.

- A little feel of feathers.

- Exactly.

- Perfect.

- So, - Fun.

- So that is that another one, another one of our more more prized mushrooms that I brought.

This is a, this is an oyster mushroom.

And so a Pleurotus is the, the, the scientific name for it.

Again, typically is growing, growing on wood.

This is not one that you won't see the ostreatus sprouting out of your lawn.

But one of the things that is kind of helps to identify a lot of our oyster mushrooms is if we look at the gills, Oh, there we go.

Notice that the gills, they start at the cap but then they also tend to run down as opposed to some of the other, some of the other mushrooms as it like this, like the lapiota one that we have where we have the gills that just end right at the right at where that central stem is.

And so again some more ways to differentiate those mushrooms do the gills, are they, do they run down the stem or do they kind of stop at the stem as well?

- Awesome.

Excellent.

Those are fun and interesting.

So you also brought, or send us a whole bunch of pictures - A whole bunch of pictures.

- Let's start with those.

And you can talk a little bit about each one of those as we I think your first one up is maybe another parasol.

- Yep, so.. - Or I've mistaken?

- [Kyle] It is.

And so that's actually what a fresh, a fresh version of the the one that I was showing.

And this one is quite large.

They're not always this big but this specimen was about eight inches in diameter.

So not quite the size of a dinner plate, but, but again, pretty, pretty large.

These are the ones that you will commonly see and they're just popping up in your yard.

And again, they're often they're feeding on some sort of Woody, some sort of Woody material whether that's old mulch, whether that's tree roots some sort of Woody material a little bit further down for the down in the soil profile.

But when people think of mushrooms this tends to be what they, what they really think of.

- [Kim] And they start like a closed umbrella and then they open.

- [Kyle] Yep.

And then they will slowly open slowly or or overnight open depending on depending on the environmental conditions.

But if we have, kind of moderate to warm temperature is an adequate moisture.

These things really can appear, appear overnight.

- [Kim] Excellent.

All right, your next one we get this one all the time.

This is stink horn - [Kyle] Stink horns.

And so these are the stink corn eggs actually.

And there was somebody else who sits who occasionally sits on the sits on the backyard farmer panel, who one time collected some what he thought were stinkhorn eggs.

They were actually snake eggs instead.

So, so Dennis had a Dennis had a field day with them but these stink horns both often find these showing up usually in mulch beds and they'll come up be bright orange or a bright red color.

And as the name implies, they, they smell.

Then if you dig down six to eight inches, this is where we this is what we tend to find, these actual eggs.

And every year when we having adequate environmental conditions the stink horn just pops back up.

- [Kim] Cool I think we might have a picture of them.

Yep.

Yeah.

- [Kyle] Yeah.

And there you can, even we can even see the, see the, the mushroom inside of or the fruiting body that will eventually come, poke his head out of the ground.

- [Kim] Fun.

All right.

Your next one is a chicken of the woods in the tree, I think.

- [Kyle] Yep.

It is.

And so that's the, that's the color that that the one that I had collected originally originally it had, again, not, not the same one but chicken of the woods mushrooms, and really a lot of the a lot of the mushrooms that we find growing on trees they are, they can be a sign of not the greatest tree health - [Kim] Right - [Kyle] because they are feeding on that hardwood.

And so there is, either there is a wound some sort of opening that allowed that fungus to, to get in and it is rotting away the inside of the inside of the tree.

So just something to keep it, keep an eye on.

- [Kim] All right.

Your next one looks like Hare's ear.

- [Kyle] Yes.

And so some of our general general cup fungi there are a few different types of cup fungi.

Also, they sometimes, sometimes almost be referred to as a birds nest - [Kim] Birds nest.yeah - There's another one that we often see the bird's nest are quite a bit smaller, but these these cup fungi, they will then they tend to produce the spores down inside the middle of that, the middle of that cup there.

- [Kim] Very fun.

And then we have everybody's favorite, puff ball - [Kyle] A puff ball, yes And a lot of different types of puff balls that are out there.

Sometimes we have they're, they're going to be kind of this darker yellowish Brown color or they might be bright white, you know I think every year you'll you'll see see a picture from somewhere in the South of somebody who's collected a puff ball.

That's the size of your head.

- [Kim] And, and you did a movie, I think.

- Kyle] Yeah.

And so I hope that hope that the movie worked, but and so that little, that little puff of dust that came out those are all of the fungal spores.

And so as we're, as we're out walking around stepping on puff balls, things like that that forces those spores out they will then land on another piece of Woody tissue and start the whole cycle over again.

- [Kim] Yeah.

Those are fun.

All right.

So then we have edible versus not with the fabulous Morel.

- [Kyle] Yeah.

And so this is the this is the time of year when everybody wants to be out wants to be out finding morels.

And aside from from one person that I know everybody's only found a couple.

And so it's, we'll see.

the hope is that with the with some of the recent moisture that we had and now that temperatures are a little bit warmer that that morals will become a little bit more common but so we have the morels and they are, this is so this is our very, very typical morale.

If you look down towards the base we can see the little, the stem, that appears there and then the very stare prototypical cap or, or head that that we have with, with those morels.

- [Kim] And then the second the one that's, the next one is the false.

- [Kyle] Is the false morale.

Yep.

And so this one is false morels.

If they really don't look a whole lot like the like the true morels, but if to an untrained eye they can be fairly easily mistaken, but these false morels they almost just look like a brain.

And so if you imagine a kind of dark reddish Brown brain sitting on the ground that tends to be what our, what are false morels look like - [Kim] All right, Don't eat them - [Kyle] Don't eat them.

Another good way to differentiate a true Morel from a false morel is to split it open.

And if it's hollow on the inside, it's a true moral if it's not hollow on the inside, it's going to be a false moral, and you'll want to leave that one alone.

- [Kim] All right.

And then, so we have a little bit of ID, I think, in our our few remaining minutes the first being the puff ball again.

- [Kyle] Yes - [Kim] So we identify those by the puffs - [Kyle] Exactly.

Just by the puff.

And so I had, I had mentioned, we kind of want to look so is there, is there a central stem that we are seeing on the mushroom and puff balls there tends, there tends not to be.

Now, if we look towards the base of this picture we can see where it originated, but there's not, there's not a stem, not a stock that we're seen or Stipe is the, as the actual term for it but they're just much, much more round than our other ones.

And the next picture that we have should have - [Kim] Central stem and cap.

- [Kyle] Exactly.

- [Kyle] Here we go.

- [Kim] And so these are much more common for or at least mushrooms that are showing up in the yard where we do have that had that nice central that nice central stem.

This is, this is another one that as it, as it opens up this is a lapiota mushroom and a different, a different species.

But as it opens up that cap really will get quite a bit larger and we'll be able to see the gills on the underside of that cap too.

- [Kim] All right.

And then I think we have a picture of the underside gills.

- [Kyle] Yep.

And again, it's just very important to to be looking at looking at all parts of that mushroom the top of the cap the bottom of the cap all these differences really can go a long way in helping to identify them.

- [Kim] All right.

You have a polypore under side.

- [Kyle] Yeah.

And so this is a, this is the the underside of a pheasant back mushroom also known as a dry ed saddle, but they, these are these can give quite large so 12 inches across.

We have the great the great size identifier there at the bottom of this picture always want to send in something.

So we have an idea of how big this picture is.

And as you can see this, this this pheasants back is over a foot, over foot in diameter.

- [Kim] Is that an edible one or no?

- [Kyle] At this point, no.

However, when, when fresh they are they actually can be fairly tasty.

Unfortunately they dry out pretty quickly.

And once they're dried in a little bit old I've been, I haven't, haven't eaten an older one but I'm told they taste just kind of like cardboard.

So, so if you want to eat cardboard then you can eat them, but it's not recommended.

- [Kim] All Right.

Your next one is the ash bulleit.

- [Kyle] Yes.

And so this is, the ash bulleit is one of the, one of the more, one of the more interesting ones.

It's not, not a true bulleit, but this one is always found in association with Ash trees.

It actually, so it's a combination of the Ash tree an insect that feeds on the Ash tree and this mushroom.

And so the, the insect is actually feeding on the, the Ash the roots of the Ash tree that allows the ash bulleit to colonize those roots and, and they pop up out of the ground.

But one of the things that I wanted to mention with this picture is.

These mushrooms are growing in clumps.

And so when we are looking at mushrooms on the ground or even on trees, are they growing in clumps or are they growing more singularly.

- [Kim] Fun.. And I think your last one before we close.

Is the parasol with rings and gills.

- [Kyle] Yeah.

And so here we have just another picture of that, of one of those large large parasol mushrooms that so often show up in the lawn really good picture of the of the underside of the gills there.

We can see that the gills don't go down the stem at all.

The other thing that we can see here is that there is a ring around that stem and the, the presence of a ring is another determining factor when helping to identify mushrooms too.

- [Kim] Awesome.

That was great Kyle We hope you enjoyed digging deeper with Kyle and yes don't eat those mushrooms without knowing what you're eating.

You can watch us of course, at 8:00 PM on Thursdays on Facebook, give us your contact or your, your comments.

And thanks for digging deeper with us on backyard farmer.

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