Door to Nature

The Honey Cap mushroom. Photo by Roy Lukes.

The extremely dry late summer and early fall this year will surely bring hardships to people in agriculture, fruit growing, gardening and even those eager to find one of their annual autumn rewards, mushrooms. Charlotte and I approached our recent class at Bjorklunden featuring “Flowerless Plants” with skepticism realizing that the dry conditions were less than ideal especially for mushrooms. Fortunately the ferns, clubmosses, mosses, lichens and liverworts, also flowerless plants reproducing by spores, were in reasonably good shape.

What a great help it was for us to have 10 students in our class, all excellent observers and eager to learn. By the week’s end we had located and identified 70 species of fungi (FUN-ji). The great majority of those we did locate were growing on wood and not from the soil. Old rotting stumps and tree trunks lying on the ground produced plenty of specimens to enjoy and study.

A lot of the species seen were woody shelf fungi, also called bracket fungi, and are mostly inedible but frequently quite colorful. Many are saprophytes, obtaining their food from dead plant matter. Like other fungi, they lack chlorophyll and consequently cannot make their own carbohydrates. Therefore they must obtain them from other sources in order to live, grow and reproduce.

The very sight of some of these woody shelf fungi, or other fleshy fungi, growing on the trunks of living trees, is an indication that these trees’ inner wood has been attacked by the mycelia (my-SEE-lee-a), the plant proper, of one or more fungi. It is a sad sight to see a favorite shade or other important landscape tree slowly dying because of this fungal attack.

One of the most notorious but edible mushrooms of our region, the Honey Cap, is highly favored by many people including ourselves. Unfortunately the spores of this mushroom enter a tree through even one small wound. Its mycelia (plural for mycelium), referred to as the Black Shoestring Mycelia, will begin growing between the cambium of the inner bark and the tree’s sapwood, expand and slowly girdle, strangle and kill the tree. Some foresters show great alarm over the approximately 10 percent of the American forest crop either killed, damaged or considerably degraded because of fungi of various species.

On the other hand, the earth would have been in deep trouble eons ago were it not for the fungi that are responsible for breaking down and recycling dead plant and animal material. Just imagine the accumulation of dead trees alone, a tangled impenetrable mess that would still be lying on the forest floor.

Charlotte and I were deeply impressed during our trip in the past to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to see the many gigantic fallen American Chestnut trees slowly rotting on the forest floor. Strangely, they were killed by a fungus that had been accidentally introduced into our country. Now other fungi are slowly returning these monarchs to the soil. Carbon is broken down, thereby releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere to be used by other living plants.

Turkey Tails. Photo by Roy Lukes.

Getting back to the bracket fungi, a number of unusual names reflect fascinating growth forms; Little Birch Shelf, Brown Crust, Chocolate Shelf, Ground Funnel, Oyster Shell, Clinker and Horse’s-hoof. Several others have become favorites of ours and a hike into the autumn woods usually results in their discovery. The Turkey-tail fungus develops into clusters of thin, leathery shapes having concentric zones of beautiful earthy colors.

The Birch Conk and Horse’s-hoof fungi often develop on dead or dying Paper Birch trees. They can grow to be 35 or more years old, adding a new zone of spore tubes on their undersides every year. Their upper sides are quite smooth, hard, and somewhat “zoned” with older annual growth.

The Artist’s Conk, Ganoderma applanatum (gan-o-DER-ma ap-pla-NAY-tum), can grow to be a foot or more in width. Its woody brown upper surface and smooth white under-surface are quite distinctive. Etching on the underside with a fine stylus leaves a permanent darkened line enabling one to draw a picture.

We’re doing daily “rain dances” in hopes of being able to enjoy some meals of edible wild mushrooms this fall. Even though we now feel very secure in eating a few dozen species of these delectable fungi, this has come about only as a result of a lot of study and learning with experts in the field. Charlotte’s Door County list of identified species now stands at 541. One of the worst ways to go about collecting mushrooms to eat is by picking them, then comparing them with pictures in a book to decide whether or not they can be safely consumed. You might make a fatal mistake.

Most important, cast out of your lives all “simple rules” which attempt to separate the edible from the poisonous kinds. Rather, approach the study seriously and, best of all, in the company of a very experienced person.

A hike into the quiet October woods will reward you with the exciting discovery of scores of wonderful woody fungi, important members of nature’s large crops of recyclers.