One Big Mushroom

Driving home the other evening my wife pulled into a local swimming pool parking lot and said "I think I saw a good mushroom." This did not surprise me as the spot is one we have found interesting mushrooms at in the past. Furthermore, coming out of a week of heavy rains, it was more than reasonably that some fungi would be fruiting. Still, to have seen a good sized mushroom from the car, as dusk was settling, was pretty enticing.

The short and sweet of it was that it was indeed a "good mushroom." A big ol' Boletus bicolor, the Two-Colored Bolete. This is one of our favorite edible boletes in our region. While a little bit of care has to be taken to distinguish them from B. sensibilis (which is less brightly colored and stains a deep blue instantly upon cutting or bruising, as opposed to B. bicolor's very slow or lack of bluing) this is a pretty easy mushroom to recognize. Finding a dinner plate sized one, just on chance, is pretty exciting.

Bigger than my wife's hand. Pretty much a dinner plate of a cap.

It could almost be used as an umbrella.