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| Gary teaches me about mushrooms....the start of a new hobby! |
Also, the Salzmans, Manny (age 94) and Joanne (age 84) and their son Jason joined us from Denver.
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| Manny at the 2012 Telluride Mushroom Festival |
The Salzmans are the founders of the Telluride Mushroom Festival, which I attended last summer. (see previous blog entry.) The dates for the 2013 Festival are August 15 - August 18. Definitely worth the trip to Telluride and the experience!
We went looking for mushrooms on Friday at Paramount Ranch, in the Santa Monica Mountains. We were not very optimistic when we started out. However to our great surprise, we found nearly 2 dozen mushroom species!
The weekend highlight for me was our Saturday mushroom survey in Griffith Park. There has not been a documented survey of the mushrooms in Griffith Park for 100 years! This was truly an exciting event. With Gary's help, we were able to identify nearly 50 species of mushrooms! Who knows how many species we might have on a "good" (rainy) year. There is much exploring and research to be done, but it is thrilling.
Turkey Tail ( a polyspore) Trametes versicolor was quite abundant. It is located on fallen trees, and helps them to decay and breakdown.
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| Turekey Tail -thought by some to have cancer-preventive properties |
Below are just a few of other mushrooms we found.
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| Boletus |
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| Coprinus |
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| Bolbitius vitellinus |
