Our wet but mild (some would say hot) summer and early fall seem to have produced record numbers of mushrooms in our woods. Some of them can be characterized by how they feel on the fingers. At the extremes, we have pleasurable Touchy-Feelies and unpleasant “Ugh”-Producers.
Above, you see two in the unpleasant category. They have very sticky caps that will make you want to wash your hands or rub them on your pants immediately after touching. (I often touch mushrooms to see to see if they have gills. These don’t.) With the help of our local Mushroom Maven, David Porter, we think that these may be dark-capped varieties of the wonderfully named Slippery Jack Mushrooms (Suilliu luteus).
Below, you’ll see a member of the touchy-feely category. It can arouse the sense of stroking very good velvet or suede when touched lightly. It also has a wonderful common name based on its color and its milk-like oozes: It’s a Chocolate Milky Mushroom (Lactarius lignyotus):
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 7 [Slippery] and 9 [Milky], 2021.)