Friday Fungi

Here's another fungus from Mount Douglas Park. I have been unable to identify this so far but my personal name for it is the Bean Sprout Fungus because it looks a little like those bean sprouts we find in Chinese cookery.

Mushrooms 2

During mushroom season in the fall a casual walk in Mount Douglas Park will usually yield a dozen different kinds of mushroom. Yesterday I only saw two - above is the second kind - these distinguished gray fungi I nearly missed in the forest floor leaf litter.

Comb Hericium (Hericium ramosum) (?)

I mentioned yesterday that Fern and I did not see the many mushrooms we were hoping for on our walk around Thetis Lake. However, we did see the small fungi pictured above and it was a first for both of us. I've put a question mark after the title of this post because my identification of this as a Comb Hericium (Hericium ramosum) is very tentative. Many photos of this fungi are of much more vigorous growths, but I suspect this may be a young one.

Fluted Black Elfin Saddle

On our most recent excursion to Mount Douglas Park I was happy to see a few of these weird little mushrooms with the fanciful name of Fluted Black Elfin Saddles. They really look like the perfect food for all those zombies we've been seeing lately and I understand they are probably edible despite being a little bit poisonous.

Mushrooming

It's been a couple of weeks since I last checked this year's mushroom crop so Fern and I went out to Mount Douglas Park for a few hours on Wednesday to see what has popped up out of the ground. The Coral Fungi pictured above is one of the beauties we found.

Second Spring 4

Just to complete the catalog of fungi that I saw on the weekend here are some small puffballs. Puffballs are edible and tasty and it's clear from this photo that there are creatures other than humans that have discovered this.

Coral Fungus (Clavulinopsis corniculata)

To continue the theme of weird shapes of mushrooms or fungi, here is another one I always enjoy seeing at this time of year, a Coral Fungus. They are not related to those little organisms that make reefs but are named because of their similar appearance to some oceanic corals. There are about 30 different kinds of fungi loosely grouped as Coral Fungi. This one is distinctive enough so that I will venture to identify it as Clavulinopsis corniculata.

Recycling

When I see something like this I realize that these mushrooms are fungi's version of what used to be a tree. All it needs is a spore and some water and a stump to make something completely new and different. Now that's recycling!

Colorful Fungi

Above is the first mushroom I spied on my walk around Thetis Lake Park earlier this week and its extraordinary color was only a hint of the wide mycological palette I have experienced over the last few days. Had anyone told me I would be seeing blue or maroon mushrooms this week I would have doubted them. But here's proof. The hobbity mushroom below was photographed in Mount Douglas Park (Pkols).

Bumper Crop!

Apparently in this part of the world the rains came at just the right time to bring out a massive crop of wild mushrooms. I've been checking in the woods for a few weeks now but was overwhelmed when I went to Thetis Lake Park yesterday. There are mushrooms all over the place - in fact if you leave the main pathways it is difficult to walk without crushing some underfoot. Not only are there many mushrooms but there are many varieties. I photographed at least a dozen different kinds yesterday in many colors, shapes and sizes. The lovely little sulphur-colored ones above are just a hint of the riches that are scattered throughout the forest right now. I'm heading out to Pkols (Mount Douglas Park) today to see if there are others out there. I hereby declare that for the rest of the week this blog will be devoted to fungi.

Coral Fungus

Fern and I went out to Goldstream Park yesterday to see if we could see any salmon spawning. We saw a few - immense fish tiredly lolling in backwaters on the edges of the stream - but the run has clearly only just begun. A visit to Goldstream is always a delight in any case, just to walk among the immense trees and lush moss-gardens. Above is a fungus new to me - apparently there are a large number of fungi in this "coral" family so I cannot identify this one precisely. No matter what's its name, it's a beauty.

Ongoing Mystery

I first posted a photo of this wonderful fungus in December a couple of years ago. I continue to be intrigued by this species' wonderful color and texture whenever I see one. They glow like little odd-shaped icicles among the moss. However, I am no closer to identifying them than I was two years ago so any suggestions will be appreciated.

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Site visitor Ken Meadows has kindly identified this mushroom as Pseudohydnum gelatinosum. It's also known as toothed jelly fungus, false hedgehog mushroom, and white jelly mushroom. It's edible and also may have some medicinal uses. Thanks Ken!

Carbon Antlers or Candlesnuff Fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon)

After checking out the pumpkin graveyard at Mount Douglas Park I went for a walk in the park itself and was pleased to see these little fungi - Carbon Antlers or Candlesnuff Fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon). I like them because they always remind me of how fundamentally mysterious nature is. Normally I think I know how common plants function - flowers and seeds and photosynthesis etc., but when I see these little plants I realize I haven't a clue about why they look like they do and what their life cycle is and I feel like I'm visiting Mars or some equally alien environment.

Crypsis

Crypsis (my new word for the day) means hiding and is used to refer to the camouflage employed by certain plants and animals to avoid predation by blending into the background. It might seem hard to apply this to the outstanding mushroom above but I will only mention that it is one a clump of about 75 big fat mushrooms that have been growing in plain sight for some time only a few steps off the West Bay Walkway. Despite my eagle-eyed pursuit of fungi, these guys passed unnoticed for a week or more because they are precisely the same color as autumn's fallen leaves and their clump, at a glance from above, just looks like a pile of leaves.

Orange Jelly

Probably most of us have noticed this fungus at some time because of its bright orange color. It appears there are a couple of kinds of fungi that look like this, mostly differentiated by what kind of rotting wood they grow on. Since I don't know what kind of host this particular fungus is on, I will not try to identify it beyond offering the two possibilities: It's a member of either the Tremella or Dacromyces genera. Here's a link to a site written by a more knowledgeable blogger than myself, that identifies a very similar orange blob as Dacromyces palmatus. I highly recommend the aforementioned blog, "Island Nature," for anyone interested in our local flora and fauna. It's very well written, interesting and informative. Just lightly browsing through it this morning has taught me a lot, including the name of a mystery fungus earlier featured here. Good photos, too!

Mushrooms

I decided that rather than share my lame guesses as to the id of the various mushrooms I encounter I will just leave them nameless until I locate a good, easy-to-use field guide and can feel a little more confident of my identification. This group was one of several having a slow feast on a huge fallen tree out at Thetis Lake Regional Park.

Mycena Genus

I spent some time yesterday looking for a field guide for fungi, unsuccessfully. This morning I decided to see what resources are available online. I finally settled on a database program called "Matchmaker: Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest." Fumbling my way through that I came up with a tentative id for the above mushrooms as members of the genus Mycena. I Googled that and checked out the images until I found one that matched and decided to call it quits for this time around. I suspect my identification of fungi will never be more than approximate or hopeful. There are many, many different kinds and often, precise identification involves spore prints and other activities that I prefer to avoid. That, however, is not going to stop me from mushrooming (defined by Mykoweb as "the pursuit of mushrooms") and continuing to try to identify what I find. I will welcome any suggestions.

Wonderful

After yesterday's promise to try to identify the plants in my photos, I have to confess I have been unable to find out what this mushroom is called. I need to find some good field guides so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. As for the moss, I'm pretty sure we're looking at a species (one of the 350 or so) of sphagnum.

Mosses and....

I selected today's pair of rather junky photos to illustrate something I'm just beginning to realize: I usually ignore anything I don't "know" and since I don't "know" most of what's in the environment, I generally ignore most of what I see. I originally selected the photo above in order to write a little about moss because the forest around Thetis Lake is luxuriously coated with mosses. (When I took the photo I was thinking only about the stream, surrounded by some green and brown areas....) The closer I looked at that big glob of moss the more I realized that there were actually three or four different kinds of moss growing there, not just one moss. When I started to look more closely at some of the other photos I'd taken that day, like the one to the right, I realized it's not just a photo of some orange mushrooms. There are at least three kinds of moss, a green slimy fungus and four or more different kinds of lichen. Some, like the strange coral-like lichen in the upper right corner are even more interesting than the subject of the photo - that dramatic pair of orange mushrooms. So, while I can't promise to identify everything I photograph from now on, I'm going to try, since it is a good way of beginning to see clearly. How many of the plants in today's photos can you identify?

Celadon in Nature

I took the photo above because the mushroom blooming here among the lichen is the smallest I've ever seen. This photo was taken using a 50mm lens and an extension tube, which gives considerable magnification. The cap of this mushroom is about the size of the head of a pin. Below are some old friends amongst the lichen family. They are probably Pixie Cup or False Pixie Cup (Cladonia chlorophaea). Click here to visit a good page on some common lichens and mosses. One of many reasons I love lichens is their wonderful and unusual colors. Looking at today's (and yesterday's) photos reminded me suddenly of that subtle, pale green celadon glaze found on ancient chinese porcelain. Now I know why that color looks so natural and true.