Category Archives: Fungi

Turkey Tail

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Turkey Tail is a bracket fungus which grows on the sides of logs or trees. It’s easy to see how it gets its common name. The fan-shaped fruiting bodies have the same kind of concentric banding and roughly the same palette of colors as an actual Wild Turkey’s tail.

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Fungi are recyclers. By digesting dead organic matter, they release carbon bound in plant cells. To do this they secrete digestive enzymes to chemically break down food into a form that they can absorb. Eventually, due to this process, nutrients are returned to the soil to be used again.

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Turkey Tail is spoon-shaped, up to four inches wide, and can be very colorful. Its colors can range from brown, white, tan, orange, red, or purple – or all of these colors at once. They often overlap each other and feel leathery to the touch.

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Like other fungi, Turkey Tail is the name for the part that you see. Most of the fungus is inside the bark of the log. The “tail” that you see is like the “flower” of the fungus.

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Turkey Tails are among the most common and most beautiful fungi in the woods and on a dreary November day, finding and photographing them can make for an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.

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Oyster Mushrooms

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The Autumn forest is brightened with the delicate, translucent, caps cascading from the surface of dead hardwood trees. This is a mushroom that lives up to its name — it looks, smells, and tastes like oysters.

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Oyster Mushrooms are wide and fleshy. They can be white, gray or brown. The caps can be up to eight inches wide and are usually in a semi-circle shape.

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The white, hairless gills (which become yellowish with age) descend the short, stub-like, lateral stalk.

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They grow throughout North America. If it rains enough and it’s not too hot or cold, you can find them during anytime, although they’re most commonly seen around this time of year.

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Oyster Mushrooms, like other fungi, are good food and habitat for small creatures, such as insects. These small animals also help spread spores (like seeds of a plant) so that new Oyster Mushrooms can grow in new places.

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Larger animals like to eat this fungi too, like Eastern Box Turtles, White-tailed Deer and Eastern Gray Squirrels. They are also an edible favorite among wild mushroom collectors and are cultivated on farms for human consumption.

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Crown-Tipped Coral Mushrooms

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These tend to grow on wood that has been dead for a very long time. They will grow on both hardwood and coniferous logs. This coral fungus or coral mushroom is appropriately named because it looks like coral from the ocean floor. It is rather small, as it Latin species name, pyxidata, hints at.

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Crown-Tipped Coral Mushrooms are actually one of the duller-colored coral fungi. There are some very striking, brightly-colored coral fungi, especially west of the Great Plains.

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Like so many fungi, this species exists as a network of cells that obtains nourishment by digesting the rotting wood that it lives within. Most of the mushroom hidden. When ready to reproduce, the branching “fruiting body” develops outside the wood, which is a reproductive structure.

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Crown-Tipped Coral Mushrooms, like other fungi, perform an important feat of breaking down once-living matter to release carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other matter back into the soil and atmosphere.

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Black-Footed Polypore

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The Black-Footed Polypore has a smooth, wavy cap that is often sunken in the center. Its off-center stalk is black near the base. It can grow singly or in groups on dead wood and stumps of trees. Although it is typically seen in Autumn, it has the ability to overwinter.

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This species lives within rotting logs as a whitish network of cells that digests and decomposes the dead wood. When ready to reproduce, mushrooms develop and emerge from the log. Not only is its appearance distinct, sometimes convex and sometimes funnel-shaped, but it is rather large – about 8 inches across.

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This is one of the many fungus species that live on decaying wood. It and other related fungi play an incredibly important role in breaking down the tough materials wood is made of and returning those nutrients to the soil.

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Mushrooms decorate woodlands the way wildflowers do, adding to our enjoyment of hikes. Many mushrooms are most prominent in the Fall, when wildflowers are winding down. Mushrooms that overwinter are an especially welcome sight on a February day like today.

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Pixie Cup Lichen

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Pixie Cup Lichen typically grows on moss on the forest floor, usually on logs or at the base of trees. I have these growing in the rock garden in my backyard. Like other types of lichens, it is a symbiotic relationship between algae and a fungus. The algae provide nutrients with their chlorophyll while being protected from drying out by the fungus.

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They are shaped like somewhat battered and sand-blasted miniature golf-tees. This lichen has an extremely rough appearance. The rim of the cup often has a reddish tint. The stem has scales which become larger the further down, as it reaches the ground. The “undergrowth” is a mass of these flattish scales. They are only about half an inch tall.

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The cup is thought to act as a spore dispersal mechanism when hit by raindrops. Pixie Cups and related species contain Didymic Acid which was once collected from the lichen and used in folk-lore medicine to treat tuberculosis.

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Not only is it an example of a symbiotic relationship with a cool shape and texture, but Pixie Cup Lichen is a sign of life that can been seen in the winter if you do some careful searching.

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Chicken of the Woods

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It would be hard to miss this layered, fan-shaped, fleshy, big orange-to-yellow mushroom when hiking through the woods.

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They are easily recognized by their large clusters of overlapping brackets and bright colors. They tend to lighten in color near the edges. The colors fade as the mushroom grows older.

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It’s edible and considered a delicacy in some parts of the world. This mushroom has a lemony, meaty taste. Some think it tastes like its chicken namesake; others describe the flavor as being more like crab or lobster.

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Chicken of the Woods is frequently discovered during the Summer and Fall, but only rarely in Winter or Spring.

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Although nice to look at, it also performs a function. This is one of the many fungus species that live on decaying wood and it plays an important role in breaking down the tough materials wood is made of and returning those nutrients to the soil.

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Lobster Mushrooms

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Lobster mushrooms are a fascinating departure from what we typically consider mushrooms. They have a color similar to cooked lobster meat or lobster shell.

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This “species” is actually an example of a mold attacking a mushroom. The mold parasitizes Russula brevipes and covers the entire fruiting body with an orange skin.

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Eventually, the fungus even begins to transform the shape of the host mushroom, twisting it into odd contortions. Here’s what an unparasitized Russula brevipes (apparently this species has no common name) looks like.

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The idea of eating a fungus infected by a mold may sound pretty gross, but Lobster Mushrooms are considered “gourmet food.”

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The presence of the parasite dramatically increases the flavor of its host. The taste of a Lobster Mushroom is said to resemble that of an actual lobster. Who knew?

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Pheasant’s Back Mushroom

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When out hiking recently I came across these large brackets growing out of dead trees. Their size (up to two feet across) and wild bird-like colors and patters were rather eye-catching.

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This large and distinctive fungus is not likely to be overlooked in nature. The radial bands of dark, flat scales on the upper surface of the cap make this species easy to identify, since there is nothing else quite like it in the forests of eastern North America.

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The underside of the shelf has large, irregularly-shaped, angular pores instead of gills. Most grow as a shelf-shaped or fan-shaped structure with a thick stem. Occasionally they grow as a complete circular, funnel-shaped mushroom.

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Like its relatives, Pheasant’s Back Mushroom plays an important role in breaking down the tough materials wood is made of and returning those nutrients to the soil. This is a key part of a forest’s recycling process.

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This organism is also known as Dryad’s Saddle. In Greek mythology, dryads were forest nymphs who were responsible for the trees and did not mingle with the other gods. They were depicted with oak-leave crowns and carried axes to protect their charges from intruders.

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This fungus is also pretty cool because it smells like watermelon!

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Greenshield Lichen

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A lichen is special, because it is not one organism, but two. It is a complicated relationship between a fungus and an alga.

The alga provides nutrients through photosynthesis, while the fungus (which the alga lives inside of) protects the alga from the elements. The result is a new organism distinctly different from its component species.

Lichens are also fascinating because of the diversity of their shapes and colors. They often occupy niches that, at least sometime during the season, are so dry or hot that nothing else can live there. I sometimes see yellow lichens on rocks in the desert, like this one found on Mount Charleston (NV) a couple of years ago.

The successful alliance between a fungus and an alga allows each to do what it does best and thrive as a result of a natural cooperation. Greenshield Lichens are usually greenish-gray. They look a lot like tiny leaves.

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Greenshield Lichens live on tree trunks and rocks, preferring shady, damp places – look for them in the woods. Lichens do not damage trees, but over time, a colony of lichens can break down rocks and put nutrients back into the soil.

Lichens are very sensitive to pollution and are an indicator of air quality. Got lichens? Then you’re breathing clean air!

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Cinnabar-red Polypore

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What’s the best looking fungus in the land? Right now this one has my vote. Polypores are fungi with many tiny holes, or pores, on the undersides of their shelves. They are also called “bracket fungi.”

Fungi provide a critical part of nature’s continuous rebirth by recycling dead organic matter into useful nutrients. They digest food outside their bodies by releasing enzymes into the surrounding environment and breaking down organic matter into a form they can absorb.

Without fungi, forests would become choked with logs, sticks and dead plants; nothing else is able to perform the function of reducing these forest byproducts back down into soil.

“Poly” means “many.” Checking out the underside of one of the shelves, it’s easy to see why it’s called a polypore. The pores are used to release spores into the air, which is the way fungi reproduce.

The shelves (or brackets) are the fruiting bodies of the organism – they are also known as conks. Most of the fungus is embedded in fallen wood. The pores are all perfectly vertical, as the spores must be able to fall out of the pores without sticking to the sides.

Cinnabar-red Polypores are often found on fallen cherry trees (like this one). They are widely distributed in North America, but a number of sources state that they are rare, so finding these today was an unexpected surprise.

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