I am attaching some more detailed photos of one I submitted before to see if the added information is more helpful. Somehow, when I attached these photos to an edit of my original post, it must have gotten lost. They look terribly poisonous, are they?
Wow! or as the kids these days say "OMG!" That is so cool! I'm going to look in my truffle book when I get home and see if anything resembles that! It has a Scleroderma-ish rind, but I'm sure there are other genera with a rind.
Hello again, If you have more truffles that you want to include in your book, this excellent book should be helpful: Field Guide to North American Truffles: Hunting, Identifying, and Enjoying the World’s Most Prized Fungi by Matt Trappe, Frank Evans, and James Trappe. Published 2007 $17 Ten Speed Press, Berkeley cheers, frog
Well, "truffles" is sometimes a catch-all term for hypogeous or underground fungi. The commercial edible truffles are all ascomycete truffles, called true truffles. Other edible truffles include some basidiomycete truffles, sometimes called false truffles. Finding truffles, searching for them without destroying their habitat, plus collecting them when they are exactly ripe, is challenging, but there are many edible varieties out there. I hunt diligently, with limited success. The only edible ones I've found by myself were too far gone to eat, but I've found some lovely ones from an interesting point of view. Interesting smells :-). I'm guessing you have a basidiomycete truffle, and the colour of the spore mass and that gel should be really helpful characteristics for identification.
They were not found underground but popping up in little clusters from under mulch and pine needles. If they're truffles, how do you know when they're "ripe" enough to eat? I've also found something in one of my mushroom books called a Hydnangium carneum. They don't give anything but its Latin name. Is that something else or also a false truffle? The photo looks very similar to what I have but doesn't show one cut in half.
Some truffles do emerge from the surface normally, some are dug out by hungry critters. Although I'm still reasonably sure your specimen is a truffle, some truffle-like things found growing on aboveground are young unexpanded mushrooms. Hydnangium carneum is a basidomycete truffle.
That's good news. Now, how big do they get? When can you eat them? Can they be protected from hungry critters 'til 'ripe'? How do you know when you can eat them? And lastly, how are they cooked/eaten?
At a glance I'd agree with the 'truffle' look? But...is that a jelly-like substance at the bottom of the inside? Is that normal for truffles to have anyone?
Yes, it is 'jelly-like' and membranous. I ran my finger across it and tasted it but I could detect no taste (and I'm still alive to talk about it). I'm still very puzzled as to what it is and hope to get it solved once and for all. Right now, I'm calling it a False Truffle for lack of a better ID.
Here is another photo of one like it. I've added captions. This one had a slug in it. I guess that explains the holes.
