DABB Bytes: More on Mushrooms
Happy Friday! This week we wanted to highlight some more of the species that are being observed. This post includes a couple screenshots of some of our species-based iNaturalist data from the Driftless region from Sunday, October 3rd through Sunday, October 10th! Throughout the week we had 1,422 observations, accounting for 572 different species, observed by 626 different people!
One specific group with a high percentage of the observations this past week…fungi (this is common around this time of the year)! The two screenshots below represent some of the common species of mushrooms that were found. One important thing to remember when submitting mushrooms into iNaturalist is that often times our observations can only be properly identified with proper photographs. Taking pictures of the mushrooms from an angle where the gills (the underside of the mushroom cap) are identifiable is very useful for our identifiers! Also, if necessary, removing a mushroom from the ground does not kill the fungi living below the ground’s surface, so picking the mushrooms and taking a quality photograph by including as much of the mushroom’s structures as possible may be more useful.
As you continue to enjoy bioblitzing and spending time in nature, please remember that it is tick season and also poison ivy is prevalent in some areas; iNaturalist is often a good resource in properly identifying poison ivy. Thank you all for being educated citizen scientists! Enjoy the nice weekend!