A wet spring is springing up mushrooms

Guest Column

Andrew W. Wilson

It has been a wet, wet, wet spring here in Denver. I moved here in 2017 and I have not experienced such a verdant spring since arriving. As such, I’ve already been getting more than my fair share of mushroom inquiries. Recently, I’ve answered questions from a concerned dog owner who passed along pictures of a Stropharia mushroom, and some primordial birds nest fungi, growing in the wet mulch of a local dog run. Apart from telling him to pick and toss the mushrooms and enjoy the birds nest fungi, there’s not much else that can be done other than monitor what your four-legged furry child sticks in its mouth.

But this got me thinking, what have people been seeing in this wet, wet, wet spring? To nd out, I decided to jump onto iNaturalist and see what others around Denver have put on the app since June 1. In the rst 12 days of June in Denver County, there was a total of 103 mushroom observations on iNaturalist, representing 42 species. Several observations of the beauti-