Mushroom Madness

Ah- what could that title allude to? The madness one might contract from eating mushrooms or the madness one might fall into trying to ID mushrooms? It would, in this case, be the latter. Now that it is approaching fall, mushrooms are multiplying at an amazing rate along my route and the temptation to write about them is strong. Only what to write? Too large a subject to tackle in its dizzying entirety. To lethal to go start dispensing info on what is poisonous and what isn’t. Best to just say how wowed I have always been by them, and try to pass some of that “wowness” on to you.

Some very basic things to know about mushrooms, which you probably already know, are that they are the “fruiting body” of the fungus. In other words, there is some species of fungus creeping underground, or inside the tree, or within the rotting log that is doing a great little job, of decomposing wood that is already dead, or in less helpful manner, occasionally eating at the heartwood. Several other types of fungi are content to live in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of a tree. And then other fungi have nothing to do with trees at all. See how complicated it is getting already! The filaments of this fungus are called “hypha” and together these “hyphae” make up the “mycelium” and from this will come the mushroom, which of course has a technical name, “the carpophore”. And that is the part that will contain the spores that will spread with the wind and make more fungus. Everybody with me so far?

And the most amazing thing about them, is the way they, shazam, show up practically overnight. You are out walking one day, and you may notice a bit of a bump under the pine needles, the next day, a cute little button mushroom, and the next day, a huge mushroom with a 6” cap! It is highly entertaining. Until you try to positively ID them. There is so much to check for; do they have gills or pores? Are those gills attached to the stalk or are they “free” of the stalk? Do they have a “skirt” (technically called a veil) around the top of the stalk? Do they bruise, or change color, or ooze a white substance when you break them? Etceteras, etceteras.

I have a lot of different Russula’s around my woods that are fairly easy to recognize.
Some have bright red caps, others magenta, while others are green or yellow. They are all “gill” mushrooms meaning that if you looked under the cap you would see gills rather than a spongy mass of pores. I also see a lot of “King Boletes” along my walk that are the pore type of mushroom.
Huge brown sticky caps, yellow pores underneath. In late August they lined the path for about 50 yards or so.

Remember the Smurf’s? Well, they made their home under a lovely red mushroom with white patches on the top, a Amanita muscaria , also called a “Fly Agaric” that, if eaten, would “cause delirium, manic behavior and deep sleep, sometimes accompanied by profuse sweating” (Simon and Schuster’s “Guide to Mushrooms”)
Ah, those crazy Smurfs, living life on the edge! On my walk I also see a fair amount of the mushroom called “Destroying Angel”. A lovely white mushroom that would ensure you would be meeting the real angels if you ate it.
The way to recognize this one is to look for a little “skirt” at the top of the stalk and to see if the mushroom itself seems to be growing out of a bulb or eggshell shaped bottom.

A well-named fungus that is common on the Cape is a “Coral fungus” that looks like, well coral. Wouldn’t want to munch on this one either, at least many varieties would make any Ex-Lax type product look mild in comparison. But fun to look at and easy to remember.


Then there is a group of fungi called Polypores or Shelf fungus that grow, like a shelf out of the trunk of a tree. Some bright yellow Sulphur polyporous mushrooms did the shazam, overnight appearance at the base of an oak I walk by. It was a gray day when I spotted them and they absolutely lit up the walk they were so vibrantly yellow.



Soon, both in my yard and in a field I frequently walk in, the “puffball” mushrooms, which dispense their spores through a small hole at the top, will entertain me, puffing out spores like smoke signals whenever a rain drop falls or them, or my poking finger.

All right, I had better stop don’t you think? Although I wish I could take you along later this fall to find the Wood Loving Lycogalas that are natures paintballs. Or have you with me when we are hunting about for the “Pinecone mushroom” that grows under pines and looks like a pinecone itself. Or, yippee, if we find a “Stinkhorn” or something else smelly and slimy looking. Remember I work with a lot of young children and the slimier, the smellier, the deadlier the better.

As I said, it’s tricky to talk about mushrooms. Maybe because you don’t know when to stop! And if you keep going Pat, you will perhaps be driving your readers to Madness!