Elfin Saddles

Shoveling beneath some rotted wood exposed some unusual mushrooms plump as cooked macaroni and about the same size and pallor, mushrooms I'd never seen before. They had elegant saddle-shaped caps with white piping, and grew in neighborly little clumps. They are casually called "elfin saddles." It's said that bugs and millipedes can hide between the lobes for a while, freeloading.

Turns out these mushrooms belong to the Helvella family, whose saddle-shaped caps are characteristic, and specifically the ones I dug up are Helvella leucopus. Quite common, and formerly considered edible, they have since been downgraded to "suspect" or "unknown," probably because there's no one left to tell us that when eaten they have no ill effects. Interesting discovery, though.

Devil's Urn Mushrooms

Looking like a dead man's fingers and toes, crawling up from under -- creepy fungi! There's actually another mushroom called Dead Man's Fingers, but "these ones" (as we say in Missouri) are Devil's Urns (Urnula craterium), the first I've seen on the property. Their rubbery "eyeballs" pop open eventually and they turn into little empty black bowls -- inedible.