mushrooms found on firewood

are they edible
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37030&id=1846485863&l=7168fdd003

Those look a lot like Tree Oysters (Pleurotus ostreatus), which are a delicious and edible species. But the picture is small and I can't be 100 percent certain (just 95%). I would suggest making a spore print, and getting a second and third opinion before eating them. Consult a few books and websites. Oysters are fairly easy to identify and there are few deadly look-a-likes.

I don't know if there are any Mycological Societies where you live but if so they are a great resource of local experts.

Here's a photo of some oysters that I grew:


oyster gills by frankenstoen, on Flickr

If those are indeed oyster mushrooms, you might wish to keep and water that firewood, rather than burn it!

did you take a spore print?

that was quite a while ago that we had those..hubby removed them and put them on a paper plate and set them in a dry environment to dry..to see what they would do..I have looked at dozens of online ID sites and i think they are the oyster mushrooms..but haven't eaten any of them..

I'm not sure what pieces of firewood he got them off of..either..

last year we buried a lot of aspen and alder trees under pond muck dredging soil...and we are having tons of mushrooms coming up out of the soil this fall..a lot of inky caps but then also some that are orange ..not sure what they are but the wildlife seem to like to eat them.

also having a good deal of fairy rings this year too..haven't tried but hear they are marginally edible.

While there are some mushrooms called "fairy ring mushrooms" the truth is that many species of mushroom will grow in a ring formation given the right conditions. This is true of poisonous mushrooms as well as edible and inedible mushrooms. I would never use the fact that mushrooms are growing in a ring as a sole basis for identification.

Mushroom experts hate to use common names, and insist on using the hard-to-spell unpronounceable Latin names to avoid confusion, as common names can often refer to more than one species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_ring