A Fine Week For Fungi!

Rain almost every day this past week.  But thankfully, not ALL day.  There were hours of each day for wandering various woodlands. Of course, I found lots of pretty wildflowers, but what really got my attention this week were all the fabulous fungi, in every woods I went to. (Thanks to all that rain!) I'm still trying to find the names of a few, but since that may never happen,  I decided to post the photos of most of my fungal finds, even if with name unknown or uncertain. Perhaps  a reader here will know the names of my mystery mushrooms and leave them in a comment. But the thing about fungi is that they can look quite different at various stages of maturity, so the photos in the guides or on-line may not look much like the mushroom in front of me.  Some of my IDs may be wrong, or still unknown, but I just enjoy the fabulous shapes and colors and textures. I hope the readers of this blog will, too.

Lake Bonita, North Shore

My friends and I had come to this sunlit but oak- and pine-shaded side of Lake Bonita because we were hoping to see Rose Pogonia orchids and Purple Pitcher Plants along the sphagnum-carpeted shore.  And so we did. But hey, we've seen those plants lots of times, but Whoa! I'd sure never seen this odd-looking growth that was tightly clinging to trailside logs. The rough brown scaly cups looked as if they were filled with jelly,  except that the stuff inside was as hard as old tar. Bulgaria inquinans is the scientific name for this sac fungus, and Black Jelly Drops is one of its vernacular names. Apparently, it looks blacker and more jelly-like as it matures.

Here's a closer look at Bulgaria inquinans, in its immature brown-cup stage.

At first, I did not recognize these smooth golden discs as Luminescent panellus (Panellus stipticus) because these newly sprouted caps had not yet acquired the flour-dusted appearance they will later  display. (UPDATE: See  my note below.  This may NOT be P. stipticus, after all.)

But the undersides, displaying golden gills radiating from a radically off-center, super-short stalk look very much the same as they will look at maturity. I wonder, though, if those furry remnants of mycelia  around the stalks will persist as the mushrooms mature.  (And yes, Luminescent Panellus is indeed luminescent, but it has to be very, very dark to detect its faint green glow.)

UPDATE: It is likely that this mushroom is NOT Panellus stipticus, because my friend Sue Pierce has apps that ID it as Crepidotus mollis (Peeling Oyster) instead.  But who knows?  I looked at many  photos of C. mollis on Google, and none of them look just like this, either.  So for now, I will let this fungus remain nameless.  It doesn't have to have a name to enjoy its remarkable being and its own kind of beauty.

Our next fungal find actually has the vernacular name Fuzzy Foot, even though its scientific name, Xeromphalina campanella, is more descriptive of the multitudes of orange-colored "small bells with dry belly buttons" that crowded the base of this rotting stump. The fuzzy mycelial feet of these tiny mushrooms is rarely visible without very close examination.

And look: there are tufts of fluffy stuff at the base of these pristine white caps of Flat Crep (Crepidotus applanatus), too! These fragile-looking shell-shaped caps were so white they appeared to glow in the shade of the woods.

These next two finds at Lake Bonita were not fungal at all, since slime molds belong to a kingdom all their own.  As George Barron describes them in his Mushrooms of Northeast North America, "Slime molds don't fit easily into our classifications system:  they move and feed like animals; they engulf all kind of organic particles in their paths, like giant amoebae; they digest what they can; and, animal-like, they violently eject unwanted particles. Slime molds are fungus-like, however, in producing tiny fruitbodies that contain spores, which are dispersed by wind." 

These fruitbodies come in a marvelous variety of shapes and colors, including the yellow threads that are covering what appear to be clumps of moss atop these rocks.  I am not sure if this is the slime mold species called Dog Vomit or Scrambled Egg (Fuligo septica), since that slime mold usually forms solid cake-like masses, not thready networks like this.  But the color is right for that species, as is its ability to fruit on living plants, such as clumps of moss.  And there are some solid masses of it at the base of two clumps.

We found this next slime mold, Coral Slime Mold (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. fruticulosa), in almost every woods we walked in this week, including at Lake Bonita.  And all of it was in this form of tiny white rods, which showed up like patches of fur on dark damp rotting wood.  It may have looked furry, but you sure could not stroke it! That "fur" was so fragile it melted at a finger's touch.  (A second variety of this species, var. porioides, produces equally white fruitbodies that are domed and honeycomb shaped.) 

Orra Phelps Nature Preserve

Since I'm leading my Thursday Naturalist friends on a walk through the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve later this week, I scooted over there to scout what treasures we might find. The floral finds, such as Canada Lily and Rosebay Rhododendron, were certainly fabulous, but the fungal ones were pretty neat, too. 

Both the cap and the stipe of this Painted Suillus (Suillus spraguei) appear to be tufted with red mohair. This Boletus-group mushroom is often associated with Eastern White Pine, with which it has a mutually beneficial relationship. In return for the sugars the photosynthesizing pine provides to the fungus,  the Painted Suillus provides water and minerals to the tree through its underground mycorrhizal network.  

I did not know the name of this cluster of golden mushrooms sprouting from a fallen limb, so I posted photos of it on Facebook, asking for ID help. The most promising suggestion was Gymnopus (alternately Collybia) dichrous,  described on one site as "a tough little wood decomposer, frequently found on hardwood sticks and logs from the Great Plains eastward. In dry weather it can shrivel up and become inconspicuous--only to revive when the rain returns."  One of its common names is Russet Toughshanks, and I'm sure hoping the ID is right, so I can use that common name.

Here's a look at the gill surface and the "shanks" of that Russet Toughshanks (if so it is), showing stipes that are somewhat furry and that fade in color as they approach the cap, traits that fit the species description. No descriptions I could find, however, mention the apparently square shape of the stipes, so perhaps there is more to learn about this fungus.

There sure is lots more to learn about THIS fungus!  Including whether it actually is a fungus. Some suggestions were offered on Facebook, but nothing that even vaguely resembled it.  Granted, it is still in the very young button stage, if a fungus it is.  Luckily, my friend Sue Pierce saw some like this, too, and knows exactly where to observe them, so if I am able to take a more representative photo, and thus be more likely to put a name to it, I will come back and add it here.

Meanwhile, aren't these truly odd? These long, brownish, kinda furry, white-tipped "things" appear to have grown from those tiny white points dotting this rotting limb.  This is the same limb the mushroom described above was growing on.  Only these were dangling below.

OK, I have learned from Barron's mushroom guide that I do not have to feel stupid if I cannot ID these tiny red-orange balls.  At least I know enough to know they are NOT fungi, but are a slime mold, most likely the young sporangia of a Hemitrichia species. At this stage, Barron reassures me, "they cannot be identified until they mature and turn mustard yellow."

Lakeside Trail, Moreau Lake State Park

I went to the Nature Center at Moreau Lake State Park to install the July wildflower posters that Sue Pierce and I created some years ago, with a poster featuring our flower photos for each month of the growing season from April to September. Task completed, I decided to take a walk around the lake. I didn't get far.  Sure, the rain that started falling was one deterrent.   But mostly my steps were slowed because I found so many delightful fungi in the first 50 yards or so.

There was no missing these schoolbus-yellow mushrooms spangling the forest floor, announcing their colorful presence even from well off the trail. I know of no other chubby stemmed mushroom aside from Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) that is this particular color.

But if I still had any doubt as to species,  a look at the thick, decurrent yellow gills would clinch the ID.

Here was another fungus that's easy to recognize, since its vernacular name kind of gives it away: Violet-tooth Polypore (Trichaptum biforme). The violet edge was certainly evident, even without observing the tooth-like pores of its fertile surface. A green alga was making a home atop these caps.  Those green patches are not this fungus's own color, but algae often inhabit Violet Tooth Polypore.  There's another fungus that frequently lives atop the caps of Violet-tooth Polypore, but they are so tiny you almost need a magnifier to see them.  They are called Fairy Pins (Phaeocalicium polyporaeum) and they usually appear later in the year.

Here's another mushroom whose vernacular name means what it says: Conifercone Cap (Baeospora myosura). Those itty-bitty capped mushrooms grow right in the scales of conifer cones, in this case the cones of Eastern White Pine.  I haven't seen these for several years, so I was really tickled to find them today.

It was getting pretty damp by now, and the forest floor was telling me it had been damp for quite some time.  There were thousands of tiny whitish-capped mushrooms spangling the dark wet leaf litter and fallen limbs and twigs, and all were species of ephemeral fungi that spring up suddenly after periods of extended rainfall and disappear quickly when the woods grows dry.  Some species grow on rotting wood and others prefer the rotting leaves, a helpful thing to know when trying to decipher some look-alikes.  But you have to look closely. These tawny caps with ruffly edges looked as if they were growing on that stick they crowded next to. But a closer look revealed they were growing both on dead leaf litter as well as atop the dead stick.  So, which species could they be?

After looking closely at these tiny whitish mushrooms with their brownish, somewhat furry-looking stipes and only a few wide-apart white gills, the closest match I could find, either in my mushroom guides or on Google, was one called Leaf Parachute (Marasmius epiphyllus).  And, it turns out, this species can grow on either decaying wood OR leaf litter.

And hey, take a look at the tiny emerging Leaf Parachutes: brownish tubular growths tipped with white. Don't they look similar to our mystery mushroom mentioned in the Orra Phelps report above?  I wonder if we have solved that mystery?  But only time, and more real-life observation will tell.  Now I can't wait to see what emerges from those at Orra Phelps!

Here were more tiny white mushrooms, these with pleated caps that look like miniature lampshades. The caps are held on thin dark stalks.  There are two species of tiny ephemeral mushrooms with pleated caps and thin dark stems, Marasmius rotula and Marasmius capillaris, both of which frequently grow in this woods. Which one could this be? Well, in this case, the substrate -- wood or leaf litter -- is a vital clue.  This one is definitely growing on wood. That would make it M. rotula, since M. capillaris is known to grow only on dead leaves.

Any other clues? Yes, in profile, the caps of M. rotula are boxy, squared off, while those of M. capillaris are more cone shaped.  Another vote for M. rotula.

And here is the clincher: the gills of M. rotula are said to come together to form a ring around the stipes, which are browner and a bit stockier than the wiry, nearly black stipes of M. capillaris. I believe, then, that I can confidently assert that these adorable little mushrooms are indeed Marasmius rotula.  It pleases me, too, that this photo shows how this species may have acquired its vernacular name, which is Collared Parachute.

At this point I had to put my camera away.  It and I were getting drenched.  The tiny water drops may look cute in the photo above, but water drops are not cute at all when they fall on my camera lens.