Top 20 Most Common Mushrooms in Show Low

Purplepore bracket(Trichaptum abietinum) is distinctively violet when young but fades to a light cream color as it matures. (If hosting algae, specimens may even appear green at first glance.) An unusually powerful white rotter, this species eschews deciduous woods and is most commonly found sprouting on dead conifer woods. It is considered inedible.

Suillus kaibabensis is a hardy yellow member of the genus Suillus. While yellow is the primary color, it can also include brown and white tones in varying degrees as well. This mushroom has a stem around 2–4 cm long, and 1–2 cm thick. The cap is broad and convex to flat, typical of many species of boletes. The stipe is bare, spotted with olive brown and can be reddish-brown at the base. The pores are yellowish-brown that can turn a salmon color with age.

The habitat of the white king bolete is restricted to southwestern North America, but being a warm-weather species, it is most abundant in Arizona and New Mexico. The mushroom was given its scientific name Boletus barrowsii after the self-taught amateur mycologist Charles "Chuck" Barrows, who discovered the species just a few decades ago.

The cap is flat when young, with a blunt, rounded and yellowish-white margin, later with a slightly depressed centre and contoured in a wave pattern towards the rim, which has a rather sharp edge when old. It is covered in felt that is grey when young and rusty brown when old, up to 10 cm (3.9 in) in diameter. The stem is short and thick, dark brown to almost black. The flesh is hard and fibrous, and ochre brown under the cap surface. Most commercially important conifers in Canada, including white spruce, are attacked by Inonotus tomentosus (Fr.) Teng also known as Onnia tomentosa (Whitney 1978). This fungus produces a white pocket rot commonly called Tomentosus root rot in both roots and butts of naturally seeded or planted conifers. White spruce and black spruce were found to be the 2 most susceptible species in an inoculation test in Saskatchewan (Whitney 1964), and high losses to root rot, in large part due to I. tomentosus, affected white spruce plantations at Grand-Mère QC (Lachance 1978). In white spruce plantations, mortality in groups of 2 or 3 trees usually occurs at about age 30–35 years (Whitney 1977), but younger trees can also be killed (Whitney 1993). Occasional trees as young as 10 years of age are infected (Whitney and Timmer 1983). Seventeen white spruce plantations 43–58 years old in Ontario incurred an average of 0.7% mortality annually over a 6-year study period (Whitney 1993). Average accumulated mortality of dominant and codominant trees was 10.3% for all plantations in that study. Tomentosus root rot was found in more than half the stumps after clearcutting in a plantation at Searchmont, Ontario, but decay and stain had not yet reached stump height (Whitney 1962).

The impressively large caps of the giant sawgill (Neolentinus ponderosus) can spread up 30 cm across and encompass entire decaying stumps and logs. Unlike other mushrooms, the giant sawgill thrives in the hotter, drier months. Look for them near Ponderosa Pines.

Eastern cauliflower mushroom is a saprobic mushroom that grows on deeply buried rotting roots and can reoccur in the same place for years until the root becomes disturbed. It is named 'cauliflower mushroom' because it resembles a cauliflower (or brain!).

The oak-loving collybia mushroom is found in temperate climates around the world, often underneath oak trees. They are tough and not considered edible. The scientific name, Gymnopus dryophilus, comes from Greek words that roughly translate to “barefooted lover of oak leaves.”