jack-o-lantern
Omphalotus olivascens
more related information

posted 01/25/11 - I wince every time I put up a "can you ID?" post. Given the increasingly limited time I'm willing to put into blogging, I tried and failed to make a positive ID, and yet I'm still curious enough to post this to Nature ID to ask others. The past several days, I've looked sporadically for online photographic matches of this fungus and have come up empty handed. In the mean time, I've made a new grouped list specifically for fungi (labels and grouped lists, at the bottom of each post and linked to the right of my home page, are mostly ordered alphabetically). I'd appreciate any genus names or hints if you're familiar with this particular mushroom. From the top view, it reminds me of delicious, golden pancakes with gills underneath. Where's the butter and syrup? Unlike other "bracket" type (i.e., growing from wood) mushrooms, these were not found on a rotting log or stump, but were stretching out from a dirt cliff. Upon closer inspection, it looks like there's an old woody branch sticking out of the dirt - possibly an old tree root?

I was considering writing a ranting monologue about the nature of traditional identification keys for the various biology disciplines and how they're really only useful to the few people who already know what they're looking at. However, I'll skip the wordiness here and leave you with some links to what others have to offer:

Ecology of Commanster's caveat and note on identification keys
Random Truth's flickr fungi of california set
The Fungi of California
Mushroom Hobby
Mushroom Expert

ps 01/26/11 - Thanks to commenters, I've edited and corrected this post and the ID above. I'm a bit embarrassed as I have already ID'd this particular fungus. In my defense, the one above looks very, very different from the jack-o-lanterns I've been visiting almost every day.