Summer Fungi (And Friends)

This post is about the mushrooms and slime molds that have appeared recently. Warm, humid weather is ideal for their growth and I’ve learned that about two days after a heavy rain is the best time to look for them in this area. I don’t know or care about the science behind this; I’m just speaking from experience. The more mushrooms you find and try to identify the more you will learn about them. When I see a mushroom with a pea size, pleated cap for instance, I think of pinwheels and parachutes. Once I know this I need to know if it grows on decomposing leaves or on decomposing wood, as these did. If I’m lucky I might come up with a name like the leaf parachute mushroom (Marasmius epiphyllus) shown here, but I don’t get too hung up on names of things these days. I just enjoy the beauty and wonder of it all.

Fungi can take you on some incredible journeys, and you don’t have to eat them to experience it. This photo is of one I’ve never seen before and luckily it was very easy to identify as the Asian beauty fungus (Radulodon copelandii.) It is thought to be an invasive fungus native to Asia which was first documented in this country 10 years ago in Massachusetts. It is a toothed crust fungus with long, flat teeth which can be white, yellowish, or the tan color seen here. It likes to grow on hardwood logs, sprouting out of the furrows in the bark.

I found it growing on an oak log from a tree cut a few years ago and the above shot shows it on the butt end of the log, looking like a fungal waterfall.

Cinnamon fairy Stools (Coltricia cinnamomea) are also called tiger eye mushrooms. They get their common name from the concentric bands of cinnamon brown coloring on their one inch diameter caps. They are a tough, leathery polypore which, if picked when fresh, will hold their color and shape for a long time. They usually grow very close to the ground, just high enough for a fairy to sit on, but as I was putting this post together I saw some growing out of a tree stump, with their short stalks parallel to the ground.

I believe this mushroom I found growing on a decomposing pine log is a common rustgill. The cap is kind of orange red and has scales, and is darker in the center.

Common rustgill fungi (Gymnopilus penetrans) have gills that are crowded and rusty orange. Though in this shot the gills don’t appear to attach to the stem (stipe) they attach at about hallway up their width. To get this shot I put my camera under the cap and clicked the shutter, and I was surprised to see so much light coming through what appeared to be a dense cap. Mushrooms almost always come with surprises.

I was walking down a hillside trail that I had walked up a few minutes earlier when I saw these ebony cup (Pseudoplectania nigrella) fungi growing in the moss. I had missed them on the way up but I don’t know how because they were easily seen against the moss. The maple leaves in the foreground should give you a good idea of their size.

Cup fungi are in the sac fungi family and usually have a shiny side and a dull, matte finish side. The shiny side is where the spores are produced and I was reading how, if you blow gently on the shiny side of an ebony cup it would suddenly shoot many thousands of spores up into the air. I’ve never tried this but I can say that inhaling mushroom spores isn’t wise, so I’d be holding my breath after I blew on one. Mushroom spores love to land on warm, moist, dark places to get their start and the interior of a human lung sounds like it would be a perfect spot. The inside of the cup is the shiny surface of these fungi but this one didn’t have much of a shine so it might have already released its spores.

These pinwheel mushrooms (Marasmius rotula) had just started growing when I found them. They were young enough to be nearly see through and so tiny all of what you see in this group would have easily fit into an acorn cap with room to spare. I was amazed that my camera was able to get a photo of something so tiny with detail that I had never seen before.

Not all small white mushrooms with pleated caps belong to the Marasmius family. The dripping Bonnet (Mycena rorida) is one of those that doesn’t. It is also called the slippery mycena because the lower half of its stem is very slimy. It appears fairly unremarkable until you learn that it is bioluminescent, which means that it emits an eerie green glow in the dark, much like the light of a firefly. It is one of many species responsible for the glowing lights seen in a nighttime forest, called foxfire or fairy fire.

One of the most common slime molds is the scrambled egg slime (Fuligo septica,) which likes to grow on wood chips, rotting logs, and sometimes even lumber. When it is spotted it is usually bright yellow as it is in the photo above, and many people’s first encounter with it is when they find it growing on their garden mulch. It is unusual among slime molds because it can grow in full sunlight. Fuligo septica produces the largest spore-producing structure of any known slime mold; some of them can be quite big and spread over a large enough area to scare people who don’t know slime molds. “What is this stuff growing in my mulch?” is a question most people in the gardening business have heard.

I recently met a woman in the woods who seemed interested in what I was doing so I started explaining slime molds to her. She wrinkled her nose and said “ugh,” as soon as she heard “slime molds.” I explained that they weren’t slimy or moldy; it was just a name that really didn’t apply. Finally she said “It’s very strange to know these things,” and walked off down the trail. I had to laugh; maybe she was right.

I’m seeing insect egg slime mold (Leocarpus fragilis) quite frequently, always growing on fallen branches, twigs, and even tree bases. As can be seen in this photo each tiny, yellow or orange pill shaped structures (sporangia) hangs from a kind of stalk. Before this stage the slime mold was a mass of plasmodium slowly moving over the forest floor, searching for yeasts, bacteria and whatever else it could feed on. When the plasmodium has run out of food it will form into separate sporangia, as can be seen here. From this stage the sporangia will turn brown and harden and start to crack open before releasing their spores to the wind. Each of the tiny sporangia seen here would measure less than the diameter of the head of a common pin. The green stick like object is a white pine needle, which might help with scale.

One of the most common slime molds is the wolf’s milk slime, which is always found growing on wood in groups and which always looks like tiny pink or brown puffballs. When young they have a pink or orange liquid inside which over time becomes the consistency of toothpaste. As this “paste” ages it dries and becomes the slime mold’s spores. When the outer shell is torn or stepped on they are released to the wind.

Red raspberry slime mold (Tubifera ferruginosa) is another slime mold that can take full sun; it was sunny, very humid, and close to 90 degrees when I found it growing on an old stump. Most slime molds would immediately dry up and fade away in full sun but this one looked pristine. It gets its name from not only its color but also from the way it will grow bumpy as it ages and resemble a raspberry. This one was quite young.

I’ve gotten a few photos of eyelash fungi over the years but this time I wanted to get a closer look at the tiny hairs that give them their name. Bright red eyelash fungi (Scutellinia scutellata) are in the cup fungus family and are edged with hairs can that move and curl in towards the center of the disc shaped body. For that reason it is also called Molly eye-winker. I’ve never been able to find out what the hairs do or why they are there, even from the Mushroom expert web site, so it’s another mushroom mystery. I’ve always found the tiny, pea size fungi in deep shade on saturated twigs or very wet tree wounds but I’ve read that they can also grow on wet soil along streams. They’re cup shaped when young but flatten as they age. I’ve never found more than four or five in a group but I’ve seen photos of large numbers growing together. On this day the flat, pea size example shown was the only one I saw.

The brittle cinder fungus (Kretzschmaria deusta) is striking in gray and white. I always find it growing vertically on standing wood; here it was growing on an old beech stump. It not only changes color but shape over time. In fact by the time it is ready to release its spores you would never guess it had once looked as beautiful as this.

Here is the brittle cinder fungus again in a previous photo, aged to what looks like a lump of coal. It has lost most of its beauty but it is ready to do what it must. It has a hard, shiny shell that will crack open and release thousands of tiny dark spores to the wind. The shell always reminds me of that liquid chocolate you pour on ice cream, which makes a thin shell. Maybe next year I’ll find it at its most beautiful once again.

Fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) can be as big as a dinner plate. This one’s “patches” are white as is the stem, and its cap is often chrome yellow as can be seen here. It is a close relative of the red and white European fly agaric that most are familiar with, and it has much the same hallucinogenic properties. The “fly” part of the common name comes from the way pieces of the fungus were put in a plate of milk. When flies drank the milk they would die. It is said that this mushroom also has the ability to “turn off fear” in humans. Vikings are said to have used it for that very reason, and those who used it were called “berserkers.”

Slugs have appeared as I was sure they would with all the rain, and they love certain mushrooms. Sometimes it can be hard to find a mushroom to photograph that they haven’t already found.

The mushroom called yellow patches (Amanita flavoconia) is related to the fly agaric we just saw but it is less than half the size. The tissue hanging from it is part of the universal veil that covered it completely when it was young. The mushroom tore through it as it grew and it was shredded into pieces, some of which remain as yellow patches on the cap. You’ll note that these patches were white on the fly agaric, and so was the stem. It can be easy to confuse the two because the stem on yellow patches can sometimes be white; I’ve done so a few times. If the mushroom is small and lemon yellow with yellow patches on the cap it is most likely this one.

So, would you eat this? I didn’t think so. Mycologists often label mushrooms like this one LBMs, which stands for “little brown mushrooms,” and since they can all more or less look alike and be a real pain to identify, the LBMs get dumped into a too hard basket; left for another day. But I saw so many of these in this one area this year I thought I’d give them a try. If I’ve done the job correctly I think it’s a mushroom called the deadly web cap (Cortinarius colymbadinus.) They’re in the same family as pretty purple corts, which should be showing themselves any time now. Cortinarius is a large family of mushrooms and many of them will make you sick. Some can kill, so the advice from mushroom people is to not eat any of them.

The coral fungi have started to appear and one of the first I’ve seen is this one, which I think this might be Clavaria ornatipes. It is described as spatulate, which means flat and wide like a spatula. They shrivel when they dry out and revive after a rain. They grow directly out of the ground and there are often hundreds of them. Books don’t have a lot to say about this one so I’m not sure it has a common name.

We’ve seen some tiny mushrooms in this post but here is one of the biggest that I know of; Berkley’s polypore. The young one in this photo was already nearing a foot in length and it’s common to find them three feet in diameter.

Here is the same fungal cluster that is in the previous photo. In just 6 days it had doubled in size and with all the rain, it will most likely keep growing until it is king of the fungal forest. Once it has stopped growing it will release its spores and slowly decompose until finally its stench will be able to be detected from several yards away. Although these giants can look as if they’re sitting on the ground they do have a short, thick stalk. This mushroom should not be confused with the edible chicken of the woods which is usually bright orange red. It can also sometimes be more yellow than red and as you break off pieces of it you’ll notice that they have yellow undersides and tiny round pores.

Here is a chicken of the woods for comparison; I found it one a few years ago and it was quite big, but not as big as a Berkley’s polypore. It was also very colorful, like a giant flower, but the color can vary and it will fade with age. I’ve been able to watch two of them age and one, which got a lot of sunlight, faded to stark white. The other was shaded and it kept some color until it finally rotted away. I’ve heard that these mushrooms can get as big as a Berkley’s polypore but I’ve never seen one get that big. Size isn’t all of it though; there are many differences between the two, and if you scroll up and down between this one and the Berkley’s polypore in the previous shot you’ll see that the differences are obvious.

Though I love flowers there are many other things as beautiful and in my opinion mushrooms are one of those. Due to drought it has been about two years I think, since I was last able to do a mushroom post. We certainly aren’t seeing drought this year so I hope to be able to do one or two more. I do hope you enjoy them.

Live this life in wonder, in wonder of the beauty, the magic, the true magnificence that surrounds you. It is all so beautiful, so wonderful. Let yourself wonder. ~Avina Celeste

Thanks for coming by.

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Time for a Climb

I’ve been walking each day since the day after I retired and it has made my lungs feel so much better, so I thought I’d tackle climbing Mount Caesar in Swanzey. It was a beautiful spring day of the kind where it really doesn’t matter where you are or where you go, as long as you are outside.

I didn’t know it at the time I started the climb but this would be a day of firsts, and the first first was seeing goldthread (Coptis groenlandicum) growing beside the trail. I can’t remember seeing it here before, though I’ve come here countless times. Any time now I should be seeing its tiny but very pretty white flowers. Once collected almost to the point of extinction, it has made a good comeback and I was happy to see that it had found its way here.

I’ve never seen a striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) here before either but here was a small tree, quietly lengthening its velvety buds. Those buds are one of the most beautiful sights in the forest in the early spring, in my opinion.

I don’t remember why I took this photo. Maybe to show what a beautiful day it was.

I stopped along the trail for a moment and happened to glance down and saw some small, hard black, cup shaped fungi that I’ve since found are called ebony cup fungi (Pseudoplectania nigrella.) The smallest one was about the size of a pencil eraser and the biggest maybe a half inch across. According to Wikipedia they like to grow in groups on soil, often amongst pine needles and short grass near coniferous trees, and that was the situation here except for mosses instead of grass. Wikipedia also says that they have a worldwide distribution, but are hard to see because of their small size and dark color. I wondered how many times I had walked by them without seeing them. It was just luck that I saw them on this day.

I’ve read that jays, nuthatches and even chickadees stash acorns in holes in trees. This wasn’t a hole but I guess it was good enough for stashing acorns in.

This trail is steadily uphill but it isn’t steep until you near the summit. I think most people could go up and down in an hour or less, as long as they didn’t stop to see anything. Since I stop to see everything, it takes me twice as long.

Here was something I’ll probably never see again. This branch fell from one of those maples and got stuck just as it is. I looked it over and there were no nails or screws, just fate and branch forks in the right places. All it needed was a sign hanging from it.

I was happy to see trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) growing along the trail. It wasn’t showing any flower buds but this wasn’t a very big plant, so they’ll come along in the future. This is another plant that is making a comeback after being collected almost into oblivion.

A huge tree fell long ago and I always stop here to catch my breath before I reach the steepest part of the trail. I didn’t see them at the time but now that I see the photo my question is, how did those stones get inside the log?

This isn’t just any old log; it has lots of interesting things to see on it no matter where you look, and one of those things is a fungus called ceramic parchment fungus (Xylobolus frustulatus.) Apparently it prefers shade because it only grows on the shaded surfaces of the log, like under that branch stub.

Here is a closer look at the fungus. I’ve never seen anything else like it but a helpful reader identified it the last time I showed it here. Its common name comes from the way it resembles broken ceramic tiles, put back together with black grout. I’ve read that it is found on the dry, well-decayed wood of oaks, so this must be an oak log. What a gigantic tree it must have been.

Here was the steepest part of the trail. I didn’t fly up it but I have to say that all the walking I’m doing has improved my lung power greatly over what it was just a short time ago. I didn’t have to take anywhere near as many breaks as I did the last time I climbed here.  

And here was the granite bedrock of the summit itself, where you realize that you’ve been climbing a huge granite dome covered by just a thin skin of soil.

I thought that I might see the red haze caused by millions of red maple flowers from up here but I couldn’t see any at all.

Instead I saw red maple flowers right here on the summit. Some of them can be seen on that tree on the right in this photo I took of clouds.

There weren’t a lot of red maple flowers up here but what were here seemed well balanced between male and female flowers.

The male red maple flowers had that beautiful light, what I call the light of creation, shining out of them. I’ve come to believe that everything created has that light. Sometimes it is dim and other times it shines brightly as it did here, but everything (and everyone) has it.

Staghorn sumac also grew on the summit. They seem to be slow to get going this year, or maybe it is just impatience on my part. They have nice red new leaves coming out of the buds in spring that I’d like to see.

If, when you’re in nature, something catches your eye, just sit with it for a while. While you’re sitting with the thing that interests you, be it a flower or a leaf or a stone or a toadskin lichen, study it. Get to know it. Study it as if you were going to have to write a paper describing it. See every little nuance, its color and shape, feel its texture, hear it whisper or see the movement it makes when the wind blows over it. Just let yourself fall into it. Forget about naming it, forget about missing the game yesterday or going to work tomorrow and just be there with it, without a thought of anything but what is there in front of you.

Take some photos or take some notes, and when you get home look them over. If you do this, before long you’ll know the thing that caught your attention better than you ever thought possible, and doing this regularly will mean the end of your looking but not seeing. Before long you’ll see with new eyes, and you’ll want to see more. Fortunately there is always plenty more to see.

I once met two college age girls coming off a trail. When I asked them if they had seen any wildflowers both said they hadn’t seen a single one. As soon as I had followed the trail for just a few yards I started seeing flowers everywhere. They were small but they were there, and I realized that day that even though some people look, they just don’t see. Don’t be one of them. You’ll miss so much of the beauty in this world.

I took the trail east from the summit for a few yards to see Mount Monadnock. I hope I wasn’t as close to the edge of that cliff as it appears when I took this photo, because it’s a long way down.

That’s better. I cropped the cliff out because heights give me the heebie jeebies and also, we can see the mountain a little better now. Henry David Thoreau said he’d rather see Mount Monadnock from a distance rather than see out from its summit because it was far more beautiful from a distance, and I agree. Once you’re up there it doesn’t look much different than right here does, and this is a much easier climb.

As I started back down the trail three mourning cloak butterflies spun in a whirlwind above my head and then disappeared. Or so I thought; this one landed on a fallen branch just out ahead of me. It sat there with its wings folded, so I waited for them to unfold. They would unfold and then quickly fold back together, and I would miss the shot. I tried and missed several times-anyone who has ever tried to photograph a butterfly knows what I mean-but then finally the beautiful wings opened and stayed open, just long enough to get what you see here.

A little further down the trail there was another one sunning itself on an outcrop. I’ve read that these butterflies mate in spring, which might account for the whirlwind behavior that I saw happening several times. They’re very pretty and I was happy to have seen them. Usually the way it works with me is, once I see something I begin to see it everywhere, so hopefully I’ll see more of these beautiful creatures.

I thought I’d leave you with some good advice I found on the summit. I find these painted stones just about everywhere I go these days.

Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well. ~Naya Rivera

Thanks for stopping in.

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