5 days in the life of a honey mushroom colony

good series karen

Thanks Antonio!

fantastic Karen,great idea,great spot,perfect photos,congratulations

Thanks for clarifying that Alex! It is amazing though - I've never given fungi much thought so the PN community is really opening my eyes to this diverse, weird & wonderful world!

yes right: the honey mushroom, but not this one, the A mellea is the "real honey mushroom" and the A solidipes ("sombre") honey mushroom is the biggest living organism ( It is known to be one of the largest living organisms, where scientists have estimated a single specimen found in Malheur National Forest in Oregon to have been growing for some 2,400 years, covering 3.4 square miles. Armillaria solidipes grows and spreads primarily underground and the bulk of the organism lies in the ground, out of sight. Therefore, the organism is not visible to anyone viewing from the surface. It is only in the autumn when this organism will bloom “honey mushrooms”, visible evidence of the organism lying beneath. Low competition for land and nutrients have allowed this organism to grow so huge and become arguably the largest living organism ) {wikipedia}

Nate, very interesting (& a little scary!) information! Thanks for the link!

Honey mushroom is arguably the largest living organism on Earth! (http://www.extremescience.com/biggest-li...)

Thank Meik! I was very lucky to spot it on its first day so I could record it's whole lifecycle.

Great series! It's nice to see the how the mushroom looks in it's various stages of development.

http://www.amazon.com/North-American-Mus...

That's a great starter book, I would say over the winter months familiarize yourself with several field guides. You will be ready for the first ones to come up in the spring. :-D

We have lots and lots of edibles here, some of them are super flavorful some of them bland, but they all are great in my opinion depending the dishes you are going to make.

Brandon, I love that idea! Plus I understand these are edible so maybe next time I will get to taste them too!

Karen, you could always grab a shovel and take some of the dirt from around this clump, and transplant it to a new location where you may have a fallen log or rotting stump. ;-) Just a suggestion. Very great series, I love watching them from start to finish!!!

Not if my husband has anything to do with it! Luckily we have over 8 acres so even though he wages war on all the fungi, dandelions, thistles & so on he is fighting a losing battle!
I spotted some similar but much smaller mushrooms this morning close to our woods so I now need to research if they are the same species.
Thanks again for your help Alex!

nice series, karenL, thumbs up, i have a similar serie about "5 days of an amanita muscaria" . and i'm happy, that it was at least from the fam. armillaria. maybe you will see him back. there is already "mycel" onder the ground and this "batch" has also let loose of his spores. "it will be back". :)

Thanks mini & textless! :)

Thanks, too for sharing such vivid photos. I am really amazed.

I like this series a lot... it's interesting to watch the life cycle.

Thanks mini! It has been really interesting to watch the growth & decay of these mushrooms over the last few days!

Very attractive, nice shot!

I've added the final photo - my husband decided we had waited far too long to cut the grass & mowed over the remains of the colony!

Thanks auntnance! My husband thinks there was a tree there when he built our home in 1995. The house was let out to a series of tenants for 12 years so it seems likely one of them removed the tree - that solves the ID problem! Your series is very interesting & I plan to chart the changes to these provided they don't get mowed over first! :)

Nice pictures. I have a series over several days: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/747...
These were growing at the base of a dead loquat. Is it possible there's a stump under the grass to support them?

Nate, no tree for maybe 50' so maybe it isn't honey mushroom after all! Thanks for the info - I guess I will have to keep looking!

Honey mushrooms grow on wood, is this right next to or near a tree? If so they could be growing on an underground root. From "All That the Rain Promises, and More", "this (honey mushrooms) is the only clustered white-spored mushroom that grows on wood and has a ring plus stringy white pith in the stalk!"

Thanks for all your help Alex - from the additional info it sounds about right!