Oh the fungus!

The snags are covered in these

5/26/2014      Mostly Cloudy      63*F     3:00pm 

Flipped cap variation

I'm so excited to have been given a glimpse into the wonderful world of fungus. Mushrooms and lichens line the forest floors of the pacific northwest. I was able to find a few in my observation site, I only wish I was looking harder for fungi when we took our trip to the Olympic Penninsula. The shade, moist areas of the forest floor are the prime locations for mushroom finds. Lichens were much easier to locate but the variation was minimal. I was thinking that it may just be the time of year with the heat and the warmth. Despite my inexperience in locating and identifying fungi, I was able to find 7 species in this small area. I've uploaded all of them to iNaturalist for ID help because as hard as I look at the identification chart I still can't confidently tell what they are. This particular observation really opened my eyes to the difficulty mycologists have in working with such a complex range of species. Not to mention elusive. I looked high and low for the capped mushrooms I was able to locate. I was turning over leaves, searching out shadowed areas, and braving the invertebrates territories in search of mushrooms. The small white caps I found were in plain view. Just a small cluster growing on the side of the walking path. I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that their hyphae and mycelium all interconnected and the tree that I found them underneath. This style was the way that I had anticipated my mushroom hunt would go. Just walking and looking should be sufficient. However, I came to find out that this familiar style of mushroom growth is just one of many. The brown mushroom sticking out the side of fallen and live trees was one of the first organisms I found at my site. This particular mushroom sticks out right under where I sit every week for my observations. I was looking forward to seeing its massive gills, but this species has a pours. They are extremely close together too. It almost looked like a solid underneath the cap but under very close inspection you can see small spongey holes throughout. These basidiomycota are a necessary addition to the Madrona Park natural area and can be found if you are willing to do some hunting for them. The ascomycota were more abundant and easier to locate. Several of the young trees were sharing their surfaces with lichen species. Again I was unable to identify the lichens I found off hand but hopefully iNaturalist will help me out with that. It was pretty exciting, however, to find more than one form of lichen. The foliose form was easily found and identifiable because of its very distinct color and look. It was usually only growing on one side of the tree which I thought was interesting and am not sure why that was. The crustose find, however, was a direct result of what I have recently learned about fungi. It reminded me of a big moldy piece of cheese (which I've heard is just fungus too but don't want to get sidetracked). It was fairly large (approx. 3" width) and seemed to be very established. I tried a couple of small scratches to get it off and it was stuck to that tree for life!

Rough and sticky capped

Looks like mold on bread…must be a lichen

The foliose form of lichen seemed to be just laying around on the ground of the walking trail. And as you can see from the picture is actually pretty big by itself. The little that I have learned about fungi has really opened me up to a very camouflaged side of the forest. I have seen lichens countless times throughout my life but never knew that they were separate organisms form the trees they were attached to. I was shocked to learn a little bit about the variety of the mushroom kingdom (don't know if that is a real term but…). It was very inspiring to learn that many mushrooms cannot be cultivated because of their complex connection with the forest. I always love when nature eludes humans with evolutional refusal to be controlled and domesticated.