The answer is 7, Jack-o-lanterns, chicken of the woods, smooth and common chanterelles,
honey and ringless honey mushrooms, plus some waxy caps. These seven mushrooms do not
always look alike, but the Jack-o'-lantern, the only toxic mushroom in this list, can
resemble the rest six non-toxic species at its different stages of development, enough
to fool starters.
That, is a patch of Jack-o’-lantern. From afar, it looks just like the Chicken of the
woods, or Laetiporus sulphureus, to be specific, which is also orangish in color. But the tell is,
the chicken of the woods belongs to the polypore family, thus the undersurface of the cap has
numerous tiny pores, whereas the jack-o'-lantern, like a a typical toadstool, has gills.
Then, we have this guy, very vibrant colored, can be confused for the jack o’-lantern
at the first glance. It is a waxy cap mushroom, probably the crimson waxy cap. Now the way
to differentiate the two is that, first, check the gills. The jack-o-lantern has closely-spaced,
decurrent gills, meaning that the gills are running down the stem. In contrast, the waxy
cap have relatively widely spaced gills that are attached to the stem. Second, the crimson
waxy cap is relatively small and flimsy. And as its name indicates, the cap is waxy or
slimy, but the jack-o-lantern has dry, smooth caps.
Okay, ready for the “real” lookalikes of the jack-o-lantern? Right, chanterelles.
Both the smooth and common chanterelles can look like the jack-o'-lantern. Smooth chanterelles
resemble mature jack-o’-lanterns, as both tend to have very wavy margins, and their
caps can be more-or-less depressed or funnel shaped. Yet again, the tell is the undersurface
of the cap. See how smooth the undersurface of a smooth chanterelles is? These shallow
winkles can hardly be confused with the true gills of a jack-o’-lantern.
But the common chanterelle can be much trickier. Although common chanterelles have what we
call “false gills,” or ridges, which are mush shallower and blunter than true gills,
it’s not always easy to tell the jack-o'-lantern apart from chanterelles with more developed
ridges, especially considering that both the true gills on the left hand-side and the ridges
on the on the right hand-side are decurrent.
So here is the key. When identifying mushrooms, don’t only focus on individual specimens.
Instead, you need to get the big picture, aka how and where the mushrooms grow. These
are chanterelles. See? they are scattered and gregarious. You may find two or three
growing together, but that's about it. You probably won’t find anything larger than
that. The other thing is, they often grow on the ground, although occasionally you can
spot some next to tree stumps. Now, see for yourself the habitat and structure of jack-o-lanterns.
They always grow on stumps, or on some buried roots, meaning that they don’t just pop
up on grass or forest floors. In addition, they grow in pretty big clusters, real clusters
with their roots connected.
By now we’ve covered four characteristics of the jack-o-lantern, the orange or sometimes
brownish color, decurrent gills, growing on tree stumps, and in large clusters.
But what if there are some species out there that possess almost all the same features?
Now check these out. They are the honey and the ring-less honey mushrooms. When they are
young and are yet to fully reveal their features, these three species are especially confusing.
One thing you can easily tell is that both honeys and ringless honeys have yellowish
caps, whereas jack-o'-lanterns have orangish caps. But never identify a mushroom only by
its cap color. There are more to check.
The honey mushroom has a partial veil that protects the gills when it’s young and forms
a ring when the mushroom matures. But there’s no ring on the stem of the jack-o'-lantern.
Yet there are ringless honeys too. They also grow on tree stumps and in big clusters, and
have decurrent gills.
But see, jack-o'-lanterns have orange caps, orange flesh, orange gills, light orange stems,
whereas ringless honeys have pale brownish-yellow caps, whitish gills, and brownish stems that
are whitish on top and get much darker toward the bottom. Besides, if you look closely enough,
the honeys and ringless honey have dark hairs on their caps and stems. and both produces
stark-white spore prints, but the spore print of the jack o‘lantern is yellowish.
Okay now you should be able to properly identify these 7 mushrooms.
It’s October now so you probably won’t see many smooth and common chanterelles, as
well as the waxy cap, but the jack-o'-lantern, chicken and honeys should be flourishing out
there. So, go out and look for them. Good luck!