WHAT HAS BUDDY FOUND? CHANTERELLES!

WHAT HAS BUDDY FOUND?,..

...CHANTERELLES...

...DELICATE, PRETTY LITTLE MUSHROOMS

Sunday, 8:30 AM.  58 degrees F at the ferry dock, 52 on the back porch.  Wind SW, light with light to moderate gusts. The sky is mostly filled with black rain clouds and it feels like rain, although the humidity is only 70%.  The barometer is falling, now at 30.09".  Highs in the mid to upper 60's today and beyond, with rain and thunderstorms again on Monday and Tuesday. 
   While investigating a nice patch of flat-topped white asters across the street (more on them tomorrow), Buddy and I stumbled across an even more beautiful find... diminutive chanterelle mushrooms, Cantharellus minor, in the Chanterelle Family, the Cantharellaceae.
   The chanterelle mushrooms are all edible and good, I am told, but I'm still not eating any wild mushrooms.  I prefer to consider them objects of natural beauty, rather than of culinary utility. These are the smallest of the chanterelles, as the species name implies.
   Their vivid orange coloration makes them stand out on mossy stream banks,  railroad rights-of-way or similar habitats. They prefer calcareous soils and moist conditions, and of course need an organic substrate to grow on.  The species is found throughout much of North America.
    Buddy, you are supposed to be a bird dog.