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Sunday’s COMA walk was an opportunity to learn new edible mushrooms.

This is a blewit (Clitocybe nuda), considered as choice as a morel.

When Lisa, one of our experienced mycologists spotted them, she told us to look for others. I listened, separating the long grass growing pondside, to find these two. Lisa’s eyes rewarded her with at least six of these violet-colored beauties.

I also learned Mica cap (Coprinus micaceus), a type of inky cap, which grows from buried dead wood. This abundant harvest was beneath a weeping willow.

The tops of these mushrooms glisten like mica in sunlight, hence the name.

I’m not sure whether it’s true only for this particular inky cap or all inky caps, but I was advised not to eat them if I consumed alcohol in the last week or plan to drink in the next week. There is a component to these mushrooms that causes an adverse reaction when you have alcohol in your system.

We found other mushrooms, including an edible mold slime or jelly fungus called Tremella Foliacea, and tree ears (Auricularia auricular). They looked all shriveled when I got them home. Now that they are part of a veggie soup, they seem to be filling out nicely.

The tree ear is the cup shaped mushroom by itself. The wavy lobes are the Tremella Foliacea.

Someone left behind puffballs, so I took them home, too.

I cooked the blewits in butter on high heat. They are as tasty as morels. The jelly fungi went into an autumn vegetable soup. I made a mushroom omelet with puffballs and the inky caps.

This hike was a real treat after such a long dry spell.