Newest first. Each report is written by that day's foray leader, or by me from the leader's notes. The species lists are the ones we identified with confidence at the cars afterward. Anything we weren't sure of went home with somebody for a spore print and a closer look, and isn't listed.

A word about the word "edible." On these lists it means edible for most people, cooked, when the mushroom has been identified with certainty by someone who knows it. It does not mean "go find some and eat it." Please read the rules before you take a single one home.

September 25 · September 18 · September 11 · September 4

The full story is on the front page, so here are only the extra notes. The five hens all came off the bases of oaks on the north-facing slope, and every one of them came back to the same trees as last year; a hen of the woods will fruit from the same tree for years, which is why people who know a hen tree don't tell. Next to one of them, Nathan Hernandez pointed out a black-staining polypore, which looks like a coarser hen and also grows at the bases of oaks. Press it with a thumb and the bruise slowly turns black. It's edible but tough, and a good lesson in looking twice.

The honey mushrooms were young and firm and everywhere. We made spore prints of every cluster that went home with anyone, at the cars, on paper plates. Honeys print white. The deadly galerina, which can grow on the same stumps, prints rusty brown. That is the whole reason for the habit.

Stan took us through the oak and pine country on the sandy south side of the game area, and we had the first hen of the woods of the season, a small one, and a fine shelf of chicken of the woods on a dead oak at eye level, which caused some excitement. Honey mushrooms were just starting. Under the white pines, painted suillus and slippery jacks; in the oaks, one small king bolete, which in this part of Michigan is a rare treat.

A cluster of jack-o'-lanterns and two destroying angels, too, and Stan made every beginner bend down over the angel's paper plate and look at the ring, the white gills and the cup at the base, from close up, without touching it. A bow hunter checking his tree stand stopped to watch and asked if we were going to eat "those white ones." We said no, with feeling.

Angie led us down into the cool hemlock and beech ravine along the creek, where the logs are mossy and the air smells like a root cellar. The prize of the day was a bear's head tooth on a beech log, a white cascade of soft icicles the size of a softball. There were oysters on another beech, and crown-tipped coral on a dead aspen at the top of the bluff.

The lesson of the day was on the hemlock stumps, where tufts of yellow sulphur tuft and a few small brown deadly galerinas grew within a foot of each other. The galerina is a little brown mushroom with a ring that most people would walk right past, and it carries the same poison as the destroying angel. Angie showed how easily it could end up in a basket of honey mushrooms picked by someone in a hurry. Somebody also brought back a handful of Indian pipe, the ghostly white plant, which is not a mushroom at all and so isn't on the list.

The first foray of the fall, and the last of the summer mushrooms. Bill, who has led this foray for more years than he'll admit, took us along the river bottom and up into the oaks. The chanterelles were mostly past, but we found enough for two members' suppers, and a patch of black trumpets that Bill spotted from fifteen feet away and nobody else could see until he pointed. Lobster mushrooms, bright orange-red, poked up through the leaves on the slope.

Bill spent a good half hour on the difference between a true puffball and an earthball, cutting each one top to bottom. The pear-shaped puffballs were pure white and soft inside. The earthball was hard, with a purple-black inside, and it is poisonous. Lesson learned: every puffball gets cut in half, every time.

Coming up: Allegan State Game Area with Sandra Kincade on Saturday, October 2; collecting for the fair on Saturday, October 9; the Mushroom Fair itself on Sunday, October 10; Rogue River with Clyde Heise on Saturday, October 16; and the last foray of the year at Yankee Springs on Saturday, October 23. Reports will go up here after each one.