The world of fungi can easily escape my awareness most of the year until the autumn rains arrive and Mt. Pisgah holds its annual mushroom festival.
The weekend following the festival August Jackson volunteered to lead a mushroom walk and we found these tiny mushrooms growing out of a Douglas-fir cone. The fungus was identified as Strobilurus trullisatus. The cap is 0.5-1.5 cm broad, convex to plane, or slightly depressed. It is often striate or wrinkled and its color ranges from white to pinkish-buff or brownish. The apex of the stalk is white and the lower portion is yellowish to brownish to tawny. The base of the stalk has yellow to tawny-orange hairs and mycelial threads. I love the way the mushrooms emerge from underneath the scales.
In the book Mushrooms Demystified, David Arora states that its habitat is on old Douglas-fir cones or rarely cones of other conifers and fruits after the first fall rains. At the beginning of his book, there is a section on habitats. Under Douglas-fir, he writes, “There are well over 1,000 kinds of mushrooms known to form mycorrhiza with Douglas-fir, and the great Douglas-fir forests of the Pacific Northwest are among the best fungal foraging grounds in the world.” That is truly incredible!
Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder. I look forward to seeing you out there.
Post by Bryan Ribelin
Resource
Arora, David. Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi. 2nd ed, Ten Speed Press, 1986.