There is fongus :amogus:

These are all the shrooms found on a three mile hike that we couldn't confidently identify in the field/collected for the fun of it.

Upon review: the left one with the sorta wine colored cap is Russula cyanoxantha , also know as the charcoal burner. The yellow/orange trumpet shaped ones next to that are chanterelles which are extremely tasty but these were starting to rot on the edges. The stylishly curvy white one is a veiled oyster, Pleurotus dryinus . There are a couple bay boletes (Imleria badia) toward the middle (probably). If those ID's are correct then all of those ones are edible.

The red one in the middle with the crazy looking stem (✨prominently reticulated stipe✨) and the shiny red one on the right are both candy apple boletes (Butyriboletus frostii). Candy apple boletes have a unique sour flavor (in Spanish, they're called “panza agria,” which translates to “sour bellies") and a bitter aftertaste. Turns out they're really easy to identify without any close lookalikes in North America. The species name pays homage to 19th century American mycologist Charles Christopher Frost, who was noted for his contributions to the study of American boletes and also for his indigistion.

The little purple capped one is probably Cortinarius iodes, commonly called violet viscid cort, which sounds to me like an RPG enemy with a jaunty idle animation that only appears in groups of three. It could also be the lookalike Cortinarius iodeiodes (the only way to tell without a microscope is by licking the slimy cap to check if it's bitter, though you wouldn't want to eat either of them anyway) and I'm only including that fact because iodeiodes is a funny thing to try to pronounce.

The cap has not yet opened and the veil is still intact but I believe the big very white one on the right is an Amanita bisporigera, or the eastern destroying angel. It produces amatoxin which from the bit I've read, quickly impairs your body's ability to create RNA and slam dunks on such crowd favorite organs as the liver, kidneys, and heart. It can kill a person as little as two days after ingestion. There were no children or pets anywhere around and the mushrooms we planned to eat (not pictured) were kept far away from it and the others in this pic. ☠️☠️☠️

Not sure about the rest, really shoulda taken more pictures. Definitely holler if you know any (Eastern US).

Oh yeah and those nifty speckled berries I'm pretty sure are the unripe fruit of false Solomon's seal and are edible, as would be the shoots. A Native American tribe in California used an effusion of crushed false Solomon’s seal roots to stun fish and facilitate their harvest from streams* so that's pretty interesting. Unless you're a fish. Probably still a better way to go than amatoxin poisoning.

If you're in North America and interested in foraging mushrooms but don't know where to start I'd recommend "The Foolproof Four."

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