Another Mystery Mushroom post

I'm curious if anyone has any idea what these mushrooms are. They are growing on red elderberry in the Pacific North west. They are living plants. I chopped them down to get more sunlight and cut them just above the mushrooms. Deep Brown caps, tanish gills, and purplish stems. The cap shape and stem color are notably (though subtly ) different from the mushrooms in the last picture which I believe is a different species growing on well rotted choke cherry. Spore print is in the works. Neither are the dreaded cyans, and there are a crazy amount of LBMs around here. Not looking to eat them - so speculation is accepted (I know that I for one will pretty much never answer a mushroom ID from a photo for fear that my inexperienced opinion based on solely visual information may be taken too seriously)

Edit: Due to attachment error middle photo is the mushroom that doesn't belong. Mushroom I'm curious about in first and third photo

Some type of laccaria?

Little non-descript brown mushrooms are kind of hard to identify -- not a whole lot of distinctive features about them. Does it ooze any white latex when you break off a piece?

I'll give that a try. My gut says probably not. The spore print is white.

The white spore print, brownish cap, tan gills and especially the fact that they are growing in clusters on hardwoods in January, make me think that these are Velvet Foot mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes). I've found this species growing on hardwoods in winter in western Oregon. They are the same species as cultivated Enokitake mushrooms, but they look completely different. Check out mushroomexpert.com to see if your mushrooms match the photos and descriptions on that website. I hope this helps...

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/flammulina_velutipes.html

John,

No white latex Goo.

Martin,

That sounds and looks plausible. I have a couple more pictures here. Anyone have any other guesses? Mushrooms commonly mistaken for Velvet Foot? All Galarinas have brown spores correct?

edit: Sticky, Check. Rubbery, Check

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:The white spore print, brownish cap, tan gills and especially the fact that they are growing in clusters on hardwoods in January, make me think that these are Velvet Foot mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes). I've found this species growing on hardwoods in winter in western Oregon.

Thank you for rescuing me from this exotic, foreign mushroom that we hardly ever see in these parts. Oh, and welcome to Permies!

John Elliott wrote:

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:The white spore print, brownish cap, tan gills and especially the fact that they are growing in clusters on hardwoods in January, make me think that these are Velvet Foot mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes). I've found this species growing on hardwoods in winter in western Oregon.

Thank you for rescuing me from this exotic, foreign mushroom that we hardly ever see in these parts. Oh, and welcome to Permies!

You're welcome John. Thank you for your warm welcome, but actually, I'm a long-term contributor here, I just went on hiatus a year ago and then added "Jr." to my screen name a few days ago. I'm a mushroom (and permaculture) fanatic and I've been growing, eating and identifying fungi for over 25 years, so I hope I can be of some help here again.

Landon Sunrich wrote:John,

No white latex Goo.

Martin,

That sounds and looks plausible. I have a couple more pictures here. Anyone have any other guesses? Mushrooms commonly mistaken for Velvet Foot? All Galarinas have brown spores correct?

edit: Sticky, Check. Rubbery, Check

Galerina, Hypholoma/Naematoloma and Pholiota all have brown or purple/brown spore prints. Collybia species have a white spore print, but they usually grow on the ground and they lack the sticky or viscid cap. The sticky/viscid cap, the yellowish edge on the margin of the cap and finding them in the middle of winter are three of the most important features for identifying Flammulina velutipes. Is there a "rusty-brown to blackish-brown velvety pubescence (tiny hairs) from the base upwards as it matures"? (This feature, unfortunately, is often hard to see on the younger specimens.) Maybe someone else who has harvested Velvet Foot mushrooms before can help confirm the ID on your mushrooms. If so, they could become a valuable strain to cultivate on logs for winter mushrooms! Enokitake mushrooms (the cultivated version), have medicinal benefits, too. (They look COMPLETELY different though.) Anyone else here have experience with Flammulina??

Thanks again, I have a few other mushrooms and a slime mold I'm curious about the damn camera is acting up on me so It'll have to wait

I am pretty curious about growing these purposefully though if they do turn out to be velvet foots (I, unfortunately for all my shortcomings, am the 'mushroom guy' amongst my social circle - I'm totally self taught and don't have a reliable local mentor to fall back on)

It seems like they prefer to grow on live trees - but since they are cultivated the obviously can grow on non living substrates as well. I was thinking about perhaps chipping a bunch of elderberry and trying to inoculate buckets full of those chips. A winter edible would be fantastic - But I'm barely seeing enough for a snack.

In case these really are Velvet Foot mushrooms (clearer photos of the base of the stem would help) and you decide to cultivate them, you might want to check out Paul Stamet's book "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms" and see pages 233-238 for an entire chapter on the cultivation of this species. Stamets recommends stump culture, and and he also mentions logs and woody debris as possible substrates for outdoor natural culture. He uses supplemented hardwood or Douglas-fir sawdust blocks for indoor culture. One simpler method would be to simply make a spore emulsion with these mushrooms and then just spray it on fresh hardwood chip beds or boxes or fresh stumps. You could also contact your local mushroom club to verify the ID of your mushrooms. Cascademyco.org is an excellent website for ID confirmation, too. Good luck!

I've been collecting (and growing) Flammulina velutipes for some years now and I can confirm M.K. Dorje's identification. The white spore print, the time of year and the sticky caps make me quite sure already, but most important for the identification of this species is the stem. On young mushrooms it's orange, but soon the base of the stem starts to get a dark brown colouration which moves up the stem when they get older. Old specimen have an almost black stem, but at all stages the surface has this velvet-like look.
The only other species which could be mistaken for Flammulina velutipes i find when hunting them are Hypholoma sp. and the highly toxic Galerina marginata, but both have completely different looking stems. I'm sorry, but please look them up for yourself, because i really suck in describing mushroom features in english. If you speak German too i could give you a better description

In this thread there are some pictures from hunting velvet foot mushrooms i posted some time ago
https://permies.com/t/31632/wild-harvesting/Winter-mushroom-hunt-Flammulina-velutipes

Here I'm creating a description of how I grow Flammulina velutipes and other species on logs
https://permies.com/t/30779/fungi/Outdoor-mushroom-cultivation

Edit: I forgot to add that pictures for identification of mushrooms should be much better! This id is pretty easy, because this time of year ther is almost nothing growing, but normally I wouldn't dare to give an identification on pictures like this. Always take pictures with natural light and they must not be blurry

Edit: Seriously? I can't make a thank you response to Florian in his native language?!?! It's really basic German and not to different from English (a germanic language) Its not like I'm writing in Farsi here and attaching maps with sketchy Xs on it. One could sound it out phonetically and have a pretty good Idea whats up....

Anyway thanks Florian. My German isn't great because I haven't had a chance to speak it in ten years - But I do have a good German dictionary. Your English is more than adequate. Sorry my old camera is so crappy. Es ist Kaput now anyway.

I guess I'll PM you as I would love to brush up on my German.