Wood Ear Fungi: Edible Mushroom that looks like Monkeys Ear

Hello everyone,hello fungi lovers friends,, hope everyone's doing great today where ever part of the world you are right now..

Its been a long time since I posted in this community.. Today.. I will share the photos of mushrooms that i saw outside our house besides our gate.. Last Friday, my wife and I went out to buy groceries..,because our food supplies were running low. As I was about to leave our gate,..I noticed a rotten mango branch with some mushrooms growing on it.. My wife suggested that I take some photos of them... I didn't bring my camera, so I used the cellphone of my wife to take a pictures instead,.. Here are the photos I managed to capture.

This mushroom is called wood ear fungus, known in our local language as (tainga ng unggoy) monkey ears..,,because it looks like a monkey's ear. It is edible and commonly used in different dishes, such as Chop Suey, a popular vegetable dish here in the Philippines that contains a different kinds of vegetables.

When we were still young, we used to see many of these mushrooms growing on rotten tree branches in our backyard or in the forest at the back of hour home. However, nowadays, I rarely see them growing around our area. I don't even see them being sold at the local market anymore...

I often see different kinds of mushrooms being sold at the market, but most of them are cultivated and grown specifically for commercial production. It has become rare to find these wild mushrooms growing naturally in the forest...

This one is a Hairy Wood Ear mushroom.. it is also edible..and commonly used in making soups...

Since we were in a hurry to leave, I only managed to take a few photos.

That's all for now, hope you like my photos..

The pictures and texts are all mine.. The first photo was edited on Chatgpt..