We had a fabulous day hiking portions of the Red, Silver, and Yellow Trails in Busiek State Forest just south of Springfield, Missouri USA, hunting mushrooms and discovering new trails for scenic adventures. I hope you enjoy the adventure along with me.
The trails, in our opinion, were not very clearly marked, and that's why we ended up hiking portions of all of them. We thought we did the entire yellow route, but from the step calculations on our mobiles, it didn't add up to the same distance, so we know we were off the trail somewhere.
We did have to cross the creek a couple of times, and on this dismount I ended up with a wet left shoe and potentially a bruised left knee, and my partner ended up with a soaked shoe as well, but we made it. I am definitely not graceful in the slightest.
Walking along the creekbed was so peaceful and completely serene.
...and of course, that beautiful Missouri fungi!
Many species of which are edible and incredibly useful to forage.
(we didn't forage anything today because we are still learning about all the various types)
...the adventure continues!
We found this gem of an old cemetery along the Yellow Trail, as well.
I love the Ozarks!
Busiek was a great visit today, and I greatly recommend it to anyone traveling through the area.
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All photos, unless otherwise credited, are taken by me on an iPhone 6+, edited in Adobe Lightroom for iPhone, and are all hosted at Imgur.
I love the Ozarks, too. So many different environments there. You might want to take a look at the Stump Puffball, Lycoperdon pyriforme, and check that it's in your 4th mushroom photo. They aren't the most flavorful mushrooms, but they are good mushrooms to start #foraging. Puffballs are pretty easy to reliably identify. The key is to cut them open lengthwise - to make sure they are like a uniform, pure white like a marshmallow. If they are any other color, they have already started making spores. And if there's any shapes in there, they are some other kind of mushroom. Happy fungi finding!
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Thank you for the tip! I'm definitely still learning, and we thought those were the Puffballs, but we also only took pictures and didn't do any cutting into anything on this particular trip. We have mainly been working to catalog what we see in this area, and then learn about them from our pictures through Missouri Department of Conservation sites et al. Thank you again for the tips! Much appreciated. I am still very new to mushroom hunting and to foraging in general, and appreciate any and all IDs and pointers. :)
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You might be interested, then, in the new Foraging Community here on Steemit. If you follow the brand-new @foraging-trail, you will be seeing more foraging posts. And we will have some special projects there, too. It will be fun to read about your journey into foraging, and could help other folks get started, too. Just be sure to tag those posts with the Foraging tag, so our SteemTrail curators can find them. Enjoy your time in the wonderful Ozarks!
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@haphazard-hstead Thank you for the information! I will definitely follow and use the tag on upcoming foraging posts, as I see a lot more of these trips in my future.
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Excellent trip, great photos! I love these kinds of adventures. Fungi is always really neat to observe in the forest.
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@adventureevryday Thank you very much. I have only recently started paying closer attention to the fungi, and I'm wondering what I've been missing out on for so long.
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Love this place and love the pictures! Glad you all found a good variety of fungi out there.
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@tltran it was our first time out there on the trails. We were both honestly shocked we hadn't been there before. I thought I had been, but I hadn't. It was a blast hunting for the little dudes. I'm trying to get J on here talking about mushrooms and other science related things since she knows way more about that than I do.
We had a blast!
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That is amazing! QA and I took Kharma there when she was just a pup and hiked the West side. Ran into a massive copperhead halfway up the mountain/hill and he did some smooth maneuvering to get the dog and hand her to me before I realized what he was being so cautious about. Was a great hike but I doubt it did anything to reduce my adrenaline levels and blood pressure until we got back to camp. If you find you need more company next time just say the word.
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