Our summer foray weekend was a great success, despite the scarcity of rainfall for the past many weeks. Some 39 people attended, OMS’ers and families, local Hiramites(= one of the lost tribes of Israel???), et.al. Both Walt Sturgeon and Dick Grimm brought large coolers of specimens, since they’d had considerably more precipitation at their respective locales. Included among these were many beautiful boletes in prime condition, so I was able to watch the process of how one determines their identity, with experts like Ernst Both, Walt, and Dick as guides. Dick provided a beaut of a specimen of Boletus rhodosanguinus, with red reticulations on the stem, also B. subvelutipes and Gyroporus castanea. During the morning, I hung out with the ID’ers while 2 groups went out, one to Eagle Creek and the other stayed at the Hiram Field Station site. Their collections were heavy on the wood decay fungi, as you’d expect from a dry spell, but there were also quite a few terrestrials. After we’d reassembled, we had a marvelous lunch with many delicious salads, sandwich fixings, fresh fruit, and deserts.
Matt Bartolotta, who will be a sophomore at Hiram, gave an excellent talk on “Amanitaceae and A.muscaria.“
After the pm forays, where more fungi were found, Ernst Both, director Emeritus of the Buffalo Museum of Science and author of "The Boletes of North America: A Compendium." gave a talk on “New Light on Bolete Relationships” which emphasized the impact that DNA analysis is having on determining the relationships between the different boletes.
Articles for the next newsletter
Deadline –Sept. 20
Dave Miller
352 West College St.
Oberlin, OH 44074
e-mail:
David.H.Miller@oberlin.edu
One ecological fact new to me is that Boletinellus (Gyrodon)
merulioides actually feeds on the excrement (honeydew) of aphids which
“suck” on ash
roots, forming sclerotia which under proper conditions then develop
into the familiar boletes always found under or near ash. So the
ash are not mycorrhizal, but still provide the food for the bolete, via
the digestive tract of the aphid! Hence you only [find] the
Ash Bolete near ash trees!
With an estimated five million living species (Lane 1990) and billions of fossil and future species, categorizing the diversity of life presents interesting challenges. Moses had an early handle on classification with numerous biblical references (Richards 1989) to animals, plants and mildew. All was good for millennia with the standard classification of two kingdoms, the plants which included fungi, bacteria and some of the protozoans (protoctistans), and the animals which included the remaining protozoans (protoctistans). Things blossomed with Whittaker's (1959) four kingdom classification. Even Whittaker (1969) could not contain his enthusiasm for broadening the scope of classification and within a decade proposed five kingdoms. In 1982 (second edition (1988) and third edition (1998)), Margulis and Schwartz popularized Whittaker's concept, delineated the phyla within the five kingdoms and made it available to the public in an understandable style. Woese et al (1990) recognizes three domains Archaea, Bacteria and Eucarya based on 16s mitochondrial RNA. In Woese's classification scheme, Margulis and Schwartz's Kingdoms Protoctista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia are all in the Domain Eucarya, while the Kingdom Bacteria is divided amongst the two Domains Archaea and Bacteria.
So what are fungi? Fungi are mostly multicellular (yeasts are single-celled) organisms, often with more than one nucleus per cell (syncytial cells). Fungi absorb their nutrition (absorptive heterotrophy) and there are no photosynthetic fungi. Fungi are incapable of movement at all stages of their life cycle (amastigote). Their mycelial body is composed of hyphal filaments, capable of producing chitin but never wood. Included are mushrooms, yeasts, molds, water molds, wilts, rusts, anthracnoses, mildews, and lichens (fungi symbiotic with algae or cyanobacteria). Uses and functions of fungi include but are not limited to decomposition of organic material, they are eaten as food by animals including humans, form mycorrhizal relationships with almost every plant, and yield antibiotic compounds which humans use in defense of bacterial infection.
What aren't fungi? Fungi are not plants which develop embryonically, have rigid cell walls, and are photosynthetic with a few exceptions. Many plants including gymnosperms and the dicotyledonous angiosperms are capable of producing wood. Woody fungi cannot produce wood. Their hardness is attributable to chitin. Fungi are not animals which are capable of movement and have a mouth at some stage in their life cycle. Animals and fungi share some significant similarities including chitin production by both fungi and certain invertebrates including insects, centipedes, spiders, and crustaceans to name a few, and the inability to photosynthesize. Not all molds are molds. Slime molds are not molds and are not fungi. Slime molds move in their aggregation phase and utilize the proteins, actin and myosin, for their motility. These proteins make up animal muscle also. Slime molds are classified as proctoctistans and may be related to amoebas, and possibly related to flagellated protozoa similar to the gut organisms of termites.
References
Lane, N. Gary. (1990). A census of past and present life. Journal of
Geological Education 38:119-122. (Personal communication 11/2003 with Dr.
Lane: this census has not been updated since 1990 and no plans to update.)
Margulis, Lynn; Karlene V. Schwartz. (1982). Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated
Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Margulis, Lynn; Karlene V. Schwartz. (1988). Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated
Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth (2nd. ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman
and Company.
Margulis, Lynn: Karlene V. Schwartz. (1998). Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated
Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth (3rd. ed.). W. H. Freeman and
Company.
Richards, Lawrence O. (1989). The Adventure Bible. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Corporation.
Whittaker, R. H. (1959). On the broad classification of organisms.
Quarterly Review of Biology 34:210-226.
Whittaker, R. H. (1969). New concepts of kingdoms of organisms. Science
163:150 160.
Woese C. R.; Kandler O.; Wheelis M. L. (1990). Towards a natural system
of organisms: proposal for the domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eucarya.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 87:4576-4579.
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Mushroom Cultivators, Take Note!
Joe Christian alerted me to a NAMA website which caters to all those who are rabidly enthusiastic about cultivating edible mushrooms. The site is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NAMA_mushroom_cultivation/ To cite the website’s mission statement: “to serve as a forum for mushroom cultivators or those who have an interest in mushroom cultivation. It is also intended as a vehicle for posting articles, for asking questions, and sharing helpful hints, new techniques or any other information that would be useful for mushroom cultivators.
Check it out, but only if you’ve got some time to spare…these web sites
are addictive!
I might as well lay my cards on the table right at the start: I often avoid woods, because I like to hunt for mushrooms in town. This habit began because I’d often need to quickly find a few specimens for my Fungi class for testing students’ observational powers and ability to key them down in David Arora’s "Mushrooms Demystified", our official text.
One enormous advantage of limiting your search to the in-town environs is that it is convenient and easy to go on a foray on short notice and with little advance planning. Oberlin has several added positives in that it’s a small town, it has a large collection of rather exotic tree species, it’s flat and laid out in the familiar grid pattern typical of Midwestern towns.
Nice day, following a period of heavy rain? Perfect! Got less than an hour to spare? No problem! All you need do is grab your collecting basket, pocket knife, paper or wax paper bags, and head out from home, to launch another mycological adventure.
Walking is, of course, the lowest-tech way to get around and affords ample time and opportunity to spot the most elusive of quarries, be it small, camouflaged, or hidden behind some bushes. Your feet can carry you to a close-enough vantage point to determine whether what you see is worthy of further investigation, with no need to first look for a parking space. And don’t forget the exercise you’ll get using this means of transportation.
Another option I use is a bicycle, which affords all the above advantages with the additional plus of greatly expanding the amount of territory you can cover in the same short time. If there are sidewalks in your locale, riding on them brings you even closer to your potential prey. Just take care to avoid others who may share the sidewalks with you. The more likely case involves no sidewalks which forces you to become even more alert to possible obstructions: be they moving or immobilized at the curb, the auto represents a formidable adversary with which to tangle. This need for vigilance inevitably detracts from your scanning capacity of the passing yards. If the weather has been inordinately generous so you can anticipate a bountiful fruiting, just shift into a lower gear and adopt a more leisurely pace. You might also try observing on only one side of the road, returning to scout the opposite side once you’ve reached the bottom of the street. This strategy is especially apt for cul-de-sacs.
Another advantage of the suburbs is the absence of such potential threats to your comfort and health as brambles, poison ivy, muddy paths, and clouds of mosquitoes, all of which mandate taking steps to circumvent the inevitable clash of values that encountering them entails. Despite the best efforts to manicure and sanitize the suburban landscape, you’ll probably encounter at least one or two of these obstacles. But never all of them!
I’ve been doing this for years now. Naturally I return to the site of an earlier find, and this allows you to follow changes over the years, and get an idea of mushroom succession. When a tree dies, almost within the year, Psathyrella candoleanna, the Common Psathyrella, will appear in great numbers, feasting on its newly dead or dying woody roots. You might find them again a few months or maybe a year later, but they seem to be short-lived saprotrophs. However, after one to three years have elapsed, I’ve often found Psathyrella velutina, the Velvety Psathyrella, growing in the same area, presumably from the now further decayed root remains. Sometimes, if the stump is left, you’ll find it colonized by the Big Laughing Gym, Gymnopilus spectabilis, or the Aborted Entoloma, Entoloma abortivum, the Fawn Mushroom, Pluteus cervinus, or more likely, some of the many wood-decaying shelf fungi. The Aborted Entolomas I found were enormous and had me stumped(?), but I was lucky enough to cross paths with Dick Grimm, who set me right. The shelf fungi are great for teaching purposes, because they usually persist and can be left in place until a worsening drought, might force me to use leathery or woody fungi for learning specimens.
The current fetish for cleaning up all traces of the dead tree has led to stump shredders, which leave a pile of stump and root chips mixed with the soil. This is then promptly carted away, robbing you of the chance of finding mushrooms there. One year, though, enough of the chips were left in the grass that an enormous “fairy ring” of the Reddening Lepiota, Lepiota americana, came up the next year, around the periphery of the tree’s remains.. Alas, there didn’t seem to be enough chips to allow for a repeat fruiting the following year.
Of course, you don’t want to restrict yourself to such a narrow habitat
range. While some of our finest edibles consume rotting trees or
logs, nowadays both of these are usually promptly removed from suburban
premises, not being permitted in the sanitized version of nature
which we seem to prefer.
.
But around our homes, another category of mushroom well represented
are the lawn inhabitants. Among the very good edibles with a taste
for well-aged grass clippings belong the Meadow Mushroom, Agaricus
campestris(usu. found Aug. into Sept.), the Horse Mushroom, Agaricus arvensis(all
fall, sometimes spring), Agaricus bitorquis, the Spring Agaricus(usu.
June), the Fairy Ring Mushroom, Marasmius oreades(whenever the rains come),
Calvatia gigantea, the Giant Puffball, Calvatia cyathiformis, the Purple-spored
Puffball(both mostly in autumn).
We had an interesting mushroom phenomenon a few years back here on
Oberlin College’s football field. The grounds crew had, as usual,
lavished attention on the field in preparation for football season, watering,
mowing, herbiciding, etc. throughout our typical hot, dry summer.
About a week before the first home game, I got a frantic call from the
Grounds Manager. The field was literally carpeted with A. campestris,
Meadow Mushrooms or Pink Bottoms; large, robust, gorgeous specimens by
the many hundreds, in prime condition, but for being laced with herbicides.
The grounds crew made some extra overtime pay that week, picking the offending
mushrooms by hand, so the field would be ready for the Oberlin College
team to lose yet another game.
Those with a similar fondness for thatch but which are inedible or poisonous include Leucoagaricus naucinus, aka Lepiota naucina(the Smooth Lepiota), Stropharia coronilla, the Garland Stropharia, Chlorophyllum molybdites (the Green-Spored Lepiota), which deserves some special attention. It is the most common cause of mushroom poisonings, because it is so obvious and common on lawns; it is large, elegant-looking, and easily mistaken for a parasol (Lepiota procera) or shaggy Parasol (Lepiota rachodes), but this poisonous one has greenish gills and a green spore print, though young immature specimens might not yet sport their tell-tale coloration. Lincoff notes: “(it) can be a drastic sickener, causing one to two or more days of violent purging.” It is not very common in northern Ohio, but is found more widely the further south you go.
There are many mushrooms which seem to be growing in lawns, but are,
in fact, coming from the roots of nearby trees, i.e., they’re mycorrhizal.
I’ll talk of my experiences with some of these in a future newsletter.
Disadvantages of Suburban Mushrooming:
Probably the most dangerous aspect of this type of mushroom hunting, at least if you’re planning to eat your finds, is the possibility that the environs in which the mushrooms grow has been treated with potentially toxic materials. Probably the most likely such situation occurs when the grounds are treated by some kind of lawn service. Whatever the pesticides be, whether herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, nematocides, any mushroom growing on such treated lawns should never be eaten. It’s not always possible to tell for sure, but my usual clue that a lawn is contaminated is whether there are any weeds mixed in with the grass. If a lawn is practically pure grass and nothing else, and if it’s a much richer green than other nearby lawns, it usually means that it’s been treated and is best avoided as a source of edible mushrooms Whether to avoid future litigation or not, companies which make and sell these toxic chemicals even go so far as to recommend that grass clippings from lawns treated by them not be used to make compost you plan to add to your vegetable garden. Sounds pretty ominous to me.
There are other less serious, problems with restricting yourself to
towns to collect: competition. One thing for sure, is that
if you want something, it’s best to collect it on the spot rather than
wait for it to enlarge or reach maturity. Two main culprits come
into play here: other people may stroll by and pick them, or even
worse, they might be “kickers, instead of pickers” so you return to find
your great specimens broken into small pieces and scattered about.
We have such a person who wanders the same haunts as I, who, I’m
told, when confronted about his destructive actions, says he’s just helping
them scatter their spores. If I ever catch him in the act, he’s going
to get one heck of a tirade about how kicking is not an improvement over
the fruiting body so well designed to disperse its load of spores!
And another thing…The other common problem I encounter is the power mower
which can shred a really great find into even more of a mess than a kicker
ever can.
The consolidated list of mushrooms found at OMS forays from 1974 to
the present day has recently been updated. 42 forays have been listed
by the club over the years. The consolidated listing can be found
at:
http://home.columbus.rr.com/hyattmiller/
The spreadsheet also includes links to images of the mushrooms (based on a Google image search), as well as common names and alternative Latin names.
OMS has pulled in 923 different species over the years. The following mushrooms are the most frequently found:
Xerula furfuracea—found at 37 forays
Ganoderma applanatum—33 forays
Pluteus cervinus—30 forays
Xylaria polymorpha—29 forays
Favolus alveolaris—28 forays
Collybia dryophila—26 forays
Laetiporus sulphureus—26 forays
Mycena leaiana—26 forays
Trametes versicolor—25 forays
Amanita vaginata –24 forays
Lycoperdon perlatum—24 forays
Scleroderma citrinum—24 forays
Amanita muscaria—23 forays
Lycogala epidendrum—23 forays
Pleurotus ostreatus—23 forays
Trichaptum biformis—23 forays
Polyporus squamosus—22 forays
Amanita rubescens—21 forays
Amanita virosa—21 forays
Boletinellus merulioides—20 forays
Coprinus micaceus—20 forays
Daedaleopsis confragosa—20 forays
Lycoperdon pyriforme—20 forays
Stereum ostrea—20 forays
OMS’s most prolific foray was held in September 1978. Held at Lake Hope State Park and Zaleski State Forest, this foray netted the mother lode of fungi: 267 species were found, based on the identification effort of Sam Mazzer and William Bridge Cooke. The second luckiest foray was held the previous year: In September 1977, at Kingwood Gardens, 228 species were identified by Sam Mazzer, Dick Grimm, Robert Morton, and Walt Sturgeon.
In the past 5 years, the August 2003 foray at Camp Myeerah near Bellefontaine stands out with 117 species. Walt Sturgeon did the work of identifying the mushrooms at this foray.
All total, over 3880 mushrooms have been identified by our experts over the years! Our experts deserve special thanks and gratitude. The best way to thank these tireless teachers is, of course, by pitching in and learning to identify mushrooms yourselves, or else by volunteering for OMS events in some other way.
If you are interested in learning to identify, you might start with
those listed above. Although experts consider these to be “yawners”,
starting by identifying the most common mushrooms out there narrows the
universe to be learned, and there’s plenty of positive reinforcement in
learning them. The OMS spreadsheet mentioned above lists all of the
mushrooms found, and it is sorted in order of frequency found. You
can also re-sort it alphabetically or however you find useful.