Fungi Studies

Several years back I did some illustrations for a children's book. During the project lots of my time was spent in the woods looking for subjects to draw and these mushroom watercolor sketches were studies done as part of that project. The mushrooms were found on a north facing slope at about 2900' in a forest composed mostly of chestnut oak, striped maple, poplar, and rhododendron. The forest floor at this locality is quite dense with herbacious plants and there are a few scattered large red spruce trees that appear to be left-overs from a cooler place in time. The topsoil is very acidic and contains lots of rich organic material. The soil's parent rock is a 1.1 billion year old quartz monzonite. The rock contains very fine and densely packed striations of dark minerals and I suspect that these mafic minerals provide mineral rich soils. The site is about 1.5 miles from the Grant Grange and about 6-8 miles from Mt. Rogers (as the crow flies).

If anyone knows more about these mushrooms, let me know. I have a wild guess for the names of a couple of them.