Gabriola Mushrooms in the Forest

To get the kids motivated to go for a walk in the Cooper Road/Rowan Way area on Gabriola, I promised them to do a bit of exploring and that we'd hit the forest and see what kinds of animals and bugs we could find.

On the walk we found a huge variety of mushrooms, it was amazing to see all the colors, shapes and sizes so we decided to collect a few to see if we could identify them at home (with the help of Google). On the way home, we bumped into some neighbours that suggested doing some spore prints. We cut the stems off the mushrooms, put them on a piece of paper with their gills down and put a glass over each mushroom.

The spore prints that they left were beautiful and apparently a good way to identify mushrooms. **just be careful picking mushrooms that you don't know- we don't want anyone getting sick.