These guys are edible, you could definitely candy them but I would be hardpressed to find enough to make it worth the effort. No flavour to them but a fancy little mid-hike snack.

I did end up eating a few of these, they tasted like water but the texture was surprisingly pleasant.

Definitely magical and exciting to come across all sorts of fungi, take them home and learn about them. I often take friends and family out to find edible mushrooms and I end up picking the least amount of the edibles in the group because I like to fill my basket with mushrooms I have never seen.

We typically get a lot of snow, sometimes 9ft in a single winter or more but the last few years have been pitiful. This was at a slightly higher elevation (I am at about 500 metres). I often see people in washington and oregon find this mushroom throughout the winter, I thought it would be later for my area but not the beginning of June.

Haha, completely over my head

Taken with a pixel 9, I run Graphene but I believe this was taken in the google camera app.

Looks to be in the family Parmeliaceae, which is pretty large. I’m really just beginning to learn how to ID but I might start at a genus like Xanthoparmelia or similar.

I originally got it for ID’ing mushrooms with spores and other microscopic features like cystidia and it hasn’t disappointed in that regard. I would say it is probably still better to hunt around for a high-quality used model but I am happy with how it performs for my needs. I’ll just mention the things I have issues with because other than that the miscroscope is great (coming from an amateur). The main issue I have is the quality of the objectives, you can see my photo has some chromatic aberration (this photo isn’t using one of the original objectives but the stock ones are about the same level of discolouration). However, for my first scope they are more than acceptable, but I am looking to switch them out this winter. Another minor issue I came across was in making a dark field filter, I did end up making one but it was a major pain compared to other people’s experiences with different scopes. All in all I am really happy with it as a beginner and if I ever decide to upgrade to a new scope I will know what to look for and what sort of features I like. Microbe Hunter’s review of this scope is great if you haven’t seen it yet.

These look excellent, good job.

I have only been keeping an herbarium for maybe 6 months but I have had good luck reviving them and viewing under the microscope. I don’t know how helpful it is for the long-run but I basically take them all out, water them and set them out in the sun for a bit. The mineral content of my well-water probably isn’t a fully balance diet for them so I am kind of just shooting from the hip and seeing how long that works. I don’t have any scientific training so its all enthusiasm + trial and error. I imagine they should last a while, it can’t be worse than the vacuum of space. If you are thinking about starting a collection I would work out a voucher tag system right away, its something I neglected to do early on and I’m kicking myself. I just use a little piece of paper and note name, date, location, substrate, etc. - not unlike a voucher slip you fill out during a bioblitz. One of my storage containers:

Thanks for takeing the time to write this up, I enjoyed reading it. This is an aspect of lichen I hadn’t really put much thought into before now. This sample is from my collection so I do have it with me. Its been in storage for a couple of months so I may try to re-hydrate it a bit before lighting it up during the night.

Thanks for the read, I appreciate it. I did pass my UV light over it and no fluorescence. I thought the lower cortex may have been lighting up but probably just looked brighter than the rest of the thallus due to the lighter colour. I always carry a uv light with me but I’m terrible for leaving it in my pocket haha

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Thanks, that would be appreciated if you have the time. It would have been pretty frosty this morning and a pretty mild day for sun so these are probably well hydrated. I’ll see if I can go grab a sample tomorrow after work.

Just checked my iNat and yep, striped coral orchid.

I find that the timing has to be just right for your location. We find them usually beginning or middle of june, sometimes later, but most people associate them with the month of may as in the “may mushroom” and see people south of our location finding them earlier, even april. These morels grow right up against my house so its a warmer and wetter microclimate so you won’t find them in the mountains yet because it hasn’t warmed up enough. We also check our spots a couple times a week, especially after finding them in the garden. I look for Verpas, a morel lookalike that fruits usually a couple weeks before we find the real morels. I also take in to consideration other things like precipitation, previous winter’s snow fall, and how hot the spring has been in my area.

We see them most years but they’re very spotty when the spring is abnormally hot or there wasn’t much snowfall.

Thanks!

That’s fine, no experience needed. I am actually not all that great at ID either, I just know the most common species in my area.

Nice, they sort of grow around my area but are very elusive