Flammulina velutipes
Flammulina velutipes
If you are a mushroom hunter, you pretty much hang up your wicker basket come autumn.
There is, however, one little mushroom that will fruit throughout the coldest part of the year, whenever there is a warm spell.
Flammulina velutipes is one of the many fungus that don’t really have a common name, so many field guides just sorta make one up based on the Latin or scientific name. In this instance, Little Orange Fuzzy Foot seems a bit unwieldy, so I’ll just call it the Winter Mushroom–although it has already started to fruit here in Central PA.
Look for this mushroom growing from cracks in the bark of elms and willows, also from down logs and stumps.