There are great many shelves or brackets which are polypores. So, I wasn’t too surprised to find a small, bright red shelf. I was sure it was just some polypore that I have never heard of before. But, I was very surprised when I turned this little shelf over. The underside had gills! How could I have not heard of these before? Google didn’t prove to be very helpful. Amanita muscaria seems to be the poster child of all mushrooms, so googling any phrase which contained the words “red” and “mushroom” yielded a wall of amanita images., with a few of the other usual suspects sprinkled in, like russulas, waxcaps and cortinarius. It wasn’t until I began to look into the other mushrooms that were on this same log that I found a podiyibr ID. The other mushrooms were a white species of crepidotus, and listed among the species was this unusual fuzzy red crepidotus species. Crepidotus cinnabarinus, noted as possibly being a parasite of other Crepidotus speceis. It also said that they are most often found growing on the same log as other crepidotus, which is exactly what I found. They are red, with a hairy cap, very very small, reportedly growing to less than 3/4″ wide at the largest. The gills are also red, and they yield a brown spore print.
