I shared the photos with Joe Szuecs of Renga Arts who knows mushrooms and he helped me identify them. (Having a couple of photos of a mushroom is not the same as identifying them in the field.)

Amanita Muscaria

Laccaria laccata or L. amethysta

Not sure

probably some sort of Mycena

Boletus zelleri

Helvella lacunosa

Cauliflower Mushroom

This cauliflower mushroom was quite large — and brain-like. It is also edible so I brought it inside. While washing it in the sink, I found dozens of insects from earwigs to millipedes living within its folds.
I boiled the whole mushroom — so big it wouldn’t easily fit in the pot. I added some pieces of it to a stew. The taste was mild and it had a woody scent, pretty much what you’d expect. I created a broth from the mushroom but I found I couldn’t really tackle eating much of the mushroom itself. Maybe it was the thought of more insects. Maybe it was the tortuous foldings. Maybe it was too old.

Okay, I was squeamish. Such as it is.

amanita muscaria

A colorful collection of Amanita Muscaria can be found near the deodora cypress, where they were last year. I blogged about them last December 27th in 2008. This year, they seem to have come a little earlier, spurred by more rain perhaps.

I touched the mushroom cap. It was wet from rain and the white areas came off, and the underlying red smudged easily, like finger paint.

This beautiful red-orange mushroom is Amanita Muscaria, which has an extensive entry in Wikipedia. It’s common name is fly agaric, which isn’t particularly easy to remember either. (It was thought to kill flies when sprinkled in milk.) The genus Amanita includes most of the poisonous mushrooms, and Amanita Muscaria is not edible.

I have four lovely specimens growing underneath a pine tree. I recall seeing only one last year in the same place. The largest of these mushrooms is about ten inches in diameter and the top flattens out.

Here’s a young one, which you can see, is stout and round.