


To Father Pitt’s untrained eye they look like boletes of some sort. He will not attempt an exact identification, because he is not very well informed in fungal matters.
Mushrooms come in all colors, shapes, and sizes, and old Pa Pitt’s visitors seem to enjoy looking at them. For his part, Father Pitt enjoys finding them, so here are a few more pictures.
There are mushrooms that decompose whole tree stumps, and there are humbler mushrooms whose job is to decompose twigs. Somebody has to do it.
Continuing our mission to document a season of flourishing mushrooms, we present Mushrooms on a Stump, part of an enormous colony growing on a stump in Frick Park.
Taking advantage of the damp weather, mushrooms have popped up everywhere. Here are a few more from Mount Lebanon and Scott Township. Once again, Father Pitt makes no serious attempt to identify them, and welcomes identifications in the comments.
An entire ecosystem depends on the bark of this one tree in Mount Lebanon: moss, lichens, a bug, and tiny mushrooms. How tiny are they? Below is a left index finger for scale.
These look to Father Pitt like Porcini or Penny-Buns (Boletus edulis). But he is not a mushroom expert. If they turn out to be Death Caps or Doom Shrooms, you have only yourself to blame if you ignored his warning: Don’t eat mushrooms unless you know with absolute certainty that they don’t want to kill you.
Everyone loves the mushrooms, it seems. So here are some more. The weather has been very kind to mushrooms lately, and we found all these within a very small area. Father Pitt is not going to try to identify them, so if any readers happen to know their mushrooms, comments would be much appreciated.