The reading this week was provided by
Carol Nourse and is from The Garden,
by Freeman Patterson, p. 100:
If it weren't for
fungi the planet would soon cease to function, probably within minutes. Like many other fungi, Amanita mushrooms are important to
the collective health of the forest, though I've also found and photographed
them in open areas, where other species also live and do their work, often in
gardens. For example, the delicious Agaricus,
often called the "meadow mushroom," is common wherever there is
decomposing manure of farm animals.
…………..
The visible part of
mushrooms, those weird constructions I love to photograph, are the reproductive
organs. However, the daily work of most species is carried out by mycelia:
fine, fibrous, root-like hairs that invade dead wood and other material,
causing it to decay. Then bacteria take over and complete the process of making
it part of the soil again. One day it occurred to me that we all garden with
fungi and bacteria to a greater extent than we do with shrubs and herbs and
grasses.
The
route: We went through the Shade Garden and on to
the white trail. Just past the Power
Line Right of Way we took the Green Trail, then continued to the right on the
White Trail to a large group of Chanterelle Mushrooms. Then we returned the
same way we came.
Our first stop was under the Power Line
on the White Trail. Gary identified the
white button mushrooms as Puffballs. He told us they should be eaten when the
inside is white, before it becomes yellow. They must be cooked to get rid of dangerous
alkaloids before eating.
Under the power line we also found a False
Caesar’s Mushroom (Thank you Sandra for working with the mushroom guide and
finding some of these names) (Amanita
parcivolvata). As we rambled along,
we found many more mushrooms than we could name. We only managed to identify about
five. We found many individuals of Black footed Marasmius (Marasmiellus nigripes), a
really interesting small, white mushroom growing on a twig (and eventually
found growing on the trunk of a tree) that had dark thread-like projections
emerging from the wood below the mushroom itself. There were so many
interesting mushrooms to see that we were hardly moving on the Green Trail. We
wanted everyone to see the Chanterelles, we decided to move on to where they
were growing and then come back along the Green Tail at a leisurely pace. Gary
said the Chanterelles (Cantharellus
cibarius) were excellent eating. There were quite a number of them at this
site. We turned around and started back.
The first stop on the way back was for a
mushroom that looked like a Chanterelle, but was growing on wood and not on the
ground. Gary noted that this one was poisonous. I could not find latin name of
the poisonous Chanterelle-looking mushroom.
But we did find the name (Thank you Sandra) for the red mushroom
bursting out of a white covering, American Caesar’s Mushroom (Amanita caesarea). One of the slime
molds and a coral mushroom were seen along the Green Trail on the return.
In addition to mushrooms we noted several
rattlesnake ferns (Botrychium virginianum),
partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) not
blooming, and pipsissiwa (Chimaphila
maculata). We also identified several trees: Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata), Scarlet Oak (Quercus
coccinea), mockernut hickory (Carya
tomentosa), pignut hickory (Carya
glabra), shagbark hickory (Carya
ovate), and a tulip tree (Liriodendron
tulipifera).
Don Hunter found our last mushroom off
the trail: Silver Ear Fungus or White
Jelly Mushroom (Tremella fuciformis).
Gary said that Jelly mushrooms were edible.
As we walked by the old flower garden we
saw wild petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis).
Returning to the Arbor, we dispersed with
many retiring to Donderos for coffee and snacks. This was a very pleasant day
with eye-catching mushrooms even if we could not identify most of them.
Hugh
