2024 was a bittersweet year for me. Wonderful moments shared with my dog, friends & family and also sad times around the same. I would like to thank everyone for their empathy and wisdom: for being so kind to me throughout this thing called life – both friends and strangers alike. I am thankful and so very grateful to all who allowed me to grieve in my own way – being there when I needed company, understanding when I needed space and supporting me no matter what. I am so very lucky.

My travels into the forests in 2024 became focused on the amazing mushrooms who manage to find their way to the light even though the going is tough. Springing up from their mycelia, punching through obstacles in their path to emerge triumphant from the underground. I know mushrooms are teachers and I never felt it so much as I did in 2024.

I’m posting all my 2024 photos in this one post. Found From October – December on Mount Elphinstone, in Sprockets Park and on Soames Hill. Thank you to everyone Addie Fern and I met in the woods this year. It was wonderful exchanging information about locations where we found loads of lobsters (they seemed to be everywhere), chanties (so many, and until mid December!) and pines (two wonderful days of tripping over them on Elphie before the wind storms blew up, felling trees and making the trails impassable and unsafe). Thank you to my new city friends who came for their first time foraging.
It was a wonderful season for my beautiful Addie Fern and me. She and Meron are forever in my heart and forever racing through the forest.

So, let’s get to the photos of these wonderful beauties. I know you know who they are.

These Amanita misc are photos McDowell took of the ever wonderous Amanita.
And just a note, obsessively precise McDowell strongly disliked the word misc until she watched Black Books, episode 1.

Think these are variants of Amanita muscaria but to be honest I’m trying to post these photos asap so have not gone into the “are they / aren’t they, and if they aren’t, then What.Are.They??!!” zone.

All input welcome. Because I’m not sure if the first two and last photos are A.muscaria. Anyone??

Introducing little Ms Addie-Fern. She is the boss of McDowell.

Why do dogs not come when they are called but as soon as you wanna take a photo…presto, magico, there they are?!

This brave Amanita was right in the middle of a mountain bike path in Sprockids. The summer of living dangerously.

The Amanita on the right is the top Amanita 7 days later. With the little one on the left showing up about 3 days ago.

I hear Mariachi static. We miss you Warren!

A pop of colour on my summer holiday in Ontario was this gorgeous little Amanita muscaria var. guessowii.

After a heavy duty thunder and lightning show complete with downpour of rain, this little beauty appeared.

It was June 30, 2015 and I was starting to believe the cottage grounds were a treasure trove of mushrooms.

July 1, 2015 and the little button burst out into a sunshine of colour. Gotta love it!

About The Amanita muscaria var. guessowii

Amanita muscaria var. guessowii is found growing solitary or gregariously, it is mycorrhizal with conifers mostly but also deciduous trees as well, it is found often in the fall but sometimes in the spring, common in the northeast, from eastern Canada to North Carolina west to Michigan. Amanita muscaria var. guessowii, commonly known as the North American Eastern Yellow Fly Agaric is a basidiomycete fungus of the genus Amanita.

More information: Amanita muscaria var. guessowii: Wikipedia

These Amanita pantherina aka panther caps were found in Lower Roberts Creek, Sunshine Coast, BC, Canada.

Amanita pantherina shows up on spring right where we find her beautiful sister Amanita muscaria in the fall.

These are buttons we found on the Sunshine Coast in spring.

View mature Amanita pantherina found in Tofino in fall.

About the Panther Cap Mushroom (Amanita pantherina)

The panther cap is an uncommon mushroom, found in both deciduous, especially beech and, less frequently, coniferous woodland and rarely meadows throughout Europe, western Asia in late summer and autumn. It has also been recorded from South Africa, where it is thought to have been accidentally introduced with trees imported from Europe, and on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada.

It is an ectomycorrhizal fungus, living in root symbiosis with a tree, deriving photosynthesised nutrients from it and providing soil nutrients in return.

Amanita pantherina contains the psychoactive compound muscimol, but is used as an entheogen much less often than the related Amanita muscaria.

More information: Amanita pantherina: Wikipedia

These Amanita muscaria were found in mid Roberts Creek and Crow Road, Sunshine Coast, BC, Canada.

Crowe Road showcased a small village of A.muscaria down by the creek. Wonderful – all stages of development. And Balfour took me somewhere in mid Roberts Creek looking for pines and we found a very cool stash of pretty fly mushrooms.

Yes, they were growing exactly like this. How cool is that??

About the Pretty Fly Mushroom (Amanita muscaria)

Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita, is a mushroom and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita. Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, Amanita muscaria has been unintentionally introduced to many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, generally as a symbiont with pine and birch plantations, and is now a true cosmopolitan species. It associates with various deciduous and coniferous trees.

The quintessential toadstool, it is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually red mushroom, one of the most recognisable and widely encountered in popular culture.

Amanita muscaria is eaten in Europe, Asia, and North America where cuisine aficionados parboil it to remove the mushroom’s psychoactive substances. A.muscaria is noted for its hallucinogenic properties, with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound muscimol. The mushroom was used as an intoxicant and entheogen by the peoples of Siberia, and has a religious significance in these cultures. There has been much speculation on possible traditional use of this mushroom as an intoxicant in places other than Siberia, such as the Middle East, India, Eurasia, North America, and Scandinavia.

The American banker and amateur ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson proposed that the fly agaric was the soma of the ancient Rig Veda texts of India; since its introduction in 1968, this theory has gained both followers and detractors in anthropological literature. The Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John Marco Allegro also proposed that early Christianity sprang from cultic use of the fly agaric in Second Temple Judaism, and that the mushroom itself was used by the Essenes as an allegory for Jesus Christ.

More information: Amanita muscaria: Wikipedia

These Amamita pantherina were found on the inlet side of Tofino, BC, Canada.

Amamita pantherina is not a common mushroom to find so McDowell was overjoyed to see one pop up right by the driveway into her house. If she hadn’t of been walking with Meron she would have missed it, so cudos to Meron. The rain had washed off much of the crunchy topping but there was no question what this gorgeous mushroom was.

The family of A. pantherina below were found right by the bike path in Tofino, BC. Again if Meron hadn’t taken McDowell for a walk McDowell would have missed them. Lots of crunchy toppings.

About the Panther Cap Mushroom (Amanita pantherina)

The panther cap is an uncommon mushroom, found in both deciduous, especially beech and, less frequently, coniferous woodland and rarely meadows throughout Europe, western Asia in late summer and autumn. It has also been recorded from South Africa, where it is thought to have been accidentally introduced with trees imported from Europe, and on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada.

It is an ectomycorrhizal fungus, living in root symbiosis with a tree, deriving photosynthesised nutrients from it and providing soil nutrients in return.

Amanita pantherina contains the psychoactive compound muscimol, but is used as an entheogen much less often than the related Amanita muscaria.

More information: Amanita pantherina: Wikipedia