Too late again

Puffballs. The first mushrooms I remember seeing. Mom cooked them for us when I was a kid; always a treat. Years later, I brought them home for my teens. Peeled and sliced and gently fried in butter, the best of a fall menu.

They're all edible. As long as they're young, completely white all the way through with no hint of colour. Once they ripen and turn brown, once they develop the little hole on top, they're fun to poke and watch the spore "smoke" puff out, but that's it; just remember the spot and look for them again next year.

So when, on my first visit to Baikie Island, I found several large patches of well-aged puffballs, I was happy. And I've gone back every year to look for them. Always too early, or too late; never once have I found them before they ripened. This year was a repeat.

Puffballs and alder leaves. One is still white outside, but the centre is full of brown spores.

Possibly Lycoperdon sp. These puffballs have a sturdy stem.

Any motion, including raindrops, will release a puff of spores from the top.

One corner of a large patch. Once they've released their spores, the round spore container collapses, leaving only the stem and a flat cap.

I've marked my calendar; next year, I'll start looking for these in September.

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Hongos polvera. Fueron los primeros hongos que encontré, hace tantos años. Mamá los buscaba y nos los preparaba; siempre eran deliciosos. Años más tarde. yo los servía a mis hijos. Pelados, rebanados, y fritos en mantequilla; no hay nada mejor en el otoño.

Todos los hongos polvera se pueden comer. Cuando son nuevos, si siguen completamente blancos, sin nada de color. Una vez maduros, se pintan de color café, se abre un orificio apical; están llenos de esporas, y no son comestibles. Me divierto tocándolos para ver como sale el "humo", la nube de esporas, pero aparte de eso, nada más hay que notar el sitio y buscarlos el año próximo.

Cuando en mi primera visita a la isla Baikie, encontré varios grupos grandes de hongos polvera, me fijé en el sitio, y he vuelto cada año a buscarlos. Siempre ha sido o muy temprano o muy tarde; ni una sola vez los he visto antes de que se hayan madurado. Este año tampoco.

1. Honguitos polvera y hojas muertas de aliso rojo. Uno de los hongos sigue blanco, pero solamente por fuera; el interior está lleno de esporas color café.
2. Posiblemente sean hongos Lycoperdon sp. Tienen un tallo grueso.
3. Cualquier movimiento, incluso el impacto de gotas de lluvia, ocasionará un escape de esporas.
4. Un area de un grupo grande de estos hongos. Una vez que hayan expulsado todas las esporas, el peridio (la bolsa exterior) desaparece, dejando el tallo con una capa aplanada encima.

Y he marcado mi calendario; el año que entra voy a empezar a buscar estos hongos en septiembre.

'Tis the season

With the onset of the rains, we're in mushroom season again. Yesterday, in 14 minutes in a friend's front yard, we found 7 different species of mushrooms, and one possible slime mold. Here are some of them.

Mycena sp., probably. Growing among Sedum sp.

Earthballs, Scleroderma sp. And maybe that slimy white stuff is a slime mold. Or not. Another fungus, maybe?

One untouched by the slime, unbroken.

At first I thought these were puffballs. But no, these, though brown already, don't puff. They're a look-alike, earthballs. (Poisonous, by the way; puffballs are edible and delicious.) And then they look like the ones I found growing a crack in the cement steps nearby a couple of  years ago; I thought then that they were earthstars, but still in the same genus as the earthballs, Schleroderma. I think, now, that they're the same ones, having just found a more comfortable setting, under landscaping shrubs.

Earth ball fungi possess three key characteristics that differentiate them from other (puffball) species:

1. The outer skin is tough and thick.

2. Their interior spore surface either starts out dark purplish-black or matures to that color. Even with ones that start out white, there is usually some staining or indication that the interior is not going to remain white.

3. They are attached to their underground mycelium network through thin mycelial strands that resemble little roots. (From Mushroom Appreciation)

Checking: 1. Yes. I poked several, to see if they puffed, then to examine the insides. (Wet and mushy). The skin was resilient.

2. All the ones I opened were black inside.

3. I didn't think to pull one up to look at the base. Next time.

One of the Scleroderma sp. that is reported on iNaturalist in this area is the Potato Earthball. That looks like a potato. Like that photo above. None of the reports, however, have been confirmed as to species; this is a difficult genus. I've just posted mine as Earthballs, not to be overly confident.

Knights, Genus Tricholoma, suggests iNaturalist.

More of the same, in the Sedum patch.

More, tomorrow.

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Ya que han empezado las lluvias, estamos otra vez en la temporada de los hongos. Ayer, en solamente 14 minutos (tenía una cita, y no pude buscar más) en el césped de una amiga, encontramos 7 especies distintas de hongos, y posiblemente un moho mucilanigoso. Aquí hay algunos.

  1. Mycena sp. probablemente. Con ramas de Sedum sp.

  2. Bolas de tierra, Scleroderma sp.. Y esa capa blanca puede ser un moho mucilaginoso. O no. Tal vez otro tipo de hongo.

  3. Una bola de tierra entera y sin moho.

Al principio, creí que eran hongos polvera. Pero no lo son; estos aunque estén ya maduros y color café no producen polvo al tocarlos. Son un hongo parecido; bolas de tierra. (Tóxicos; y los hongos polveras son comestibles y deliciosos.) Más se parecen a los que encontré hace un par de años en las grietas de los escalones de cemento a unos pasos de distancia. Pensaba, entonces, que eran estrellas de tierra (el mismo género, Scleroderma). Ahora llego a creer que son los mismos, que ahora se han encontrado un habitat más cómodo bajo los arbustos que rodean el césped.

Los hongos Bola de Tierra tienen tres características clave que los distinguen de otras especies. (Los hongos polvera.)

1. El peridio (pared exterior) es grueso y resistente.

2. La superficie interior o empieza de un color oscuro entre morado y negro o al madurar toma ese color. Aun con los que empiezan siendo blancos, hay algún tinte o alguna indicación que el color blanco no es permanente.

3. Están conectados con su red de micelios por medio de hilos delgados que parecen ser raices pequeñas. (De Mushroom Appreciation)

Comprobando: 1. Sí. Toqué varios, con alguna fuerza, primero para ver si emitían polvo, luego para examinar la materia interior (que estaba mojada y con una textura como de avena cocida). El peridio era bastante resistente.

2. La masa interior de todos los que abrí era negra.

3. No se me ocurrió arrancar uno para mirar las raices. Para la próxima.

Una de las especies de Scleroderma que veo documentado en la isla en iNaturalist es la Bola de Tierra Papa. Que se parece a una papa. Como en esa foto arriba. (#4) En ninguna de esas observaciones, sin embargo, se han confirmada la especie; este es un género difícil. Yo solamente subí mis fotos llamándolas Bolas de Tierra, por no presumir de saber con exactitud.

  4. El programa de iNaturalist sugiere que este hongo pertenece al género Tricholoma.

  5. Y otros de la misma especie, con plantitas de Sedum sp.

Dejo otros para mañana.

Not a puffball

It looked, at first glance, like a puffball, a small, round white golf-ball in the moss.

Look again.

Amanita sp.

It's one of the poisonous Amanita species, still just a button. Distinguishing marks: our local puffballs are smooth or covered with tiny spikes or knobs. This one wears irregularly-shaped patches.

Give it a few days, and it will take on the "umbrella" mushroom shape. A puffball stays round and will turn brown and develop a hole for the release of its brown cloud of spores.

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Parecía uno de los hongos muy comestibles, los hongos polveras. Una bola blanca y redonda, del tamaño de una pelota de golf, descansando sobre el musgo.

Hay que mirarlo más de cerca.

Es uno de los hongos tóxico del género Amanita, todavía en botón. Como se distinguen: los hongos polvera locales tienen la capa lisa, o cubierta de espinas o nudos miniaturos, muy regulares. Este lleva parches de forma variable, los restos del velo.

Después de unos pocos dias, tendrá la forma típica de paraguas. Un hongo polvera se mantiene redondito, pero se vuelve color café y está lleno de un polvo marrón, las esporas, que suelta al aire con cualquier impacto.

Gem-studded

 Last November, I came across a few clumps of stalked puffballs on Baikie Island. I had never seen ones like these before; all the puffballs I had seen were round balls, apparently stemless. These had definite stalks, longer than the cap.

I walked down the same trail last week. The puffballs are back. Not a few clumps this time; great masses of them, all along the trail, mostly in deep shade.

Lycoperdon perlatum, the gem-studded puffball.

Mature puffballs, full of ripe spores, ready to puff.

Last year I wasn't sure of the species, having found them too late to see their original shape. I was three weeks earlier this year.

I found this on MushroomExpert.com: 

Probably the most commonly seen woodland puffball in North America, Lycoperdon perlatum is widely distributed and fairly easily recognized. I say that, and yet I have consistently misidentified it for years, assigning the name to virtually any pear-shaped, golf-ball-sized, terrestrial puffball with spines.

What I was not paying enough attention to was the spines themselves. In Lycoperdon perlatum the spines are firm and cone-shaped, with relatively wide bases; they are often surrounded by shorter spines and/or granules, their tips often turn brownish—and, when they fall away, they leave a clearly defined, pock-mark scar where the base of the spine was attached.

And there it is: the brownish tips of the spines in the fresh puffballs, the pock-mark scar on the older ones. And the "pear-shaped or top-shaped whitish fruitbody" turning brown or olive coloured at the base. (This from E-Flora.)

The "golf-ball" puffballs are edible and delicious while the flesh is still white. I like to fry them gently with butter. These are still edible, with caution, as long as they are completely white, but E-Flora says they're "bland at best and bitter at worst". And they are too easily confused with young specimens of the extremely poisonous Amanitas. I'm glad I didn't try to harvest any.

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El año pasado, a mediados de noviembre, encontré unos grupos de hongos "puffball" (bolita de polvo soplado) con tallo. Nunca había visto puffballs como estos; todos los que antes conocía eran redondos, como una pelotita, sin tallo. Estos tenían tallos bien formados, más grandes que la pelota por encima.

Pasé por el mismo sendero la semana pasada. Están de vuelta los honguitos. Y no solo unos grupos esta vez, sino grandes multitudes de hongos, a todo lo largo del camino, casi siempre en sombra.

Son los hongos, Lycoperdon perlatum, el "puffball" adornado con joyas, lo llaman. La primera foto es de un grupo de hongos frescos, todavía blancos por dentro. La segunda muestra un grupo de hongos ya maduros, con las esporas cafés, y un poro por encima, por donde saldrán las esporas al aire con cualquier movimiento, o empujado con gotas de lluvia.

El año pasado, no podría estar segura de la especie de estos hongos, ya que cuando los encontré ya estaban todos bien maduros. Esta vez, llegué con tres semanas de adelanto, y los pude ver mejor.

Encontré esta descripción en MushroomExpert.com:

Este es probablemente el hongo de los bosques más comunmente visto en norteamérica. Lycoperdon perlatum está distribuido ampliamente, y se puede identificar facilmente. Esto lo digo, pero a pesar de esto, lo he malidentificado por muchos años, dando su nombre a casi cualquier hongo puffball en forma de pera del tamaño de una pelota de golf que tuviera espinas y creciera en la tierra.

Lo que no había notado era la forma de las espinas. En Lycoperdon perlatum, las espina son firmes, en forma de cono, con las bases amplias, están muchas veces rodeadas de espinas más cortas o de granitos; sus puntas se vuelven cafés – y cuando se caen, dejan una cicatriz bien marcada en la base.

Y ahí está: las espinas con puntas color de café, las cicatrices en los hongos ya maduros.  Y el "cuerpo blanco en forma de pera o de trompo" que se vuelve color chocolate o verde oliva en la base del tallo. (Esto viene de E-Flora.)

Los puffball en forma de pelota de golf son comestibles y deliciosos mientras que su cuerpo esté completamente blanco; a mí me gustan fritos con mantequilla. Estos aquí sí se pueden comer, con cuidado, mientras estén blancos, pero según E-Flora son apenas insípidos o hasta amargos. Y se pueden confundir facilmente con ejemplares jóvenes de las Amanitas que son extremadamente venenosas. Estoy contenta de no haberlos traído a casa para la cena.

Button, button

There's a patch of grass and clover between the parking lot and the highway at Oyster Bay. Not a lawn, not a meadow; just an open area with a picnic bench or two under cottonwoods. I've never seen anyone crossing it, except for me and my family. Cutting across it the other day, I saw many large Amanita mushrooms, all stomped and kicked to bits. Who does this? What harm would they have done, left in place?

A couple of buttons had sprung up since the vandals left:

Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric. About 2 inches across.

Another. On the stick at the left are a bunch of tiny mushrooms, looking like shelf polypores.

There were a few big puffballs, too. Nobody had touched these.

Mature puffball, with open pore ready to release its spores. Not edible at this stage.

Several puffballs, Lycoperdon perlatum, here. Not ripe, edible and choice as long as it's completely white inside.

I poked at the brown puffball with a finger, gently; it released a puff of brown spores. But after the mistreatment of the Amanitas, I didn't want to disturb anything, so I left it to wait for a good rain.

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En el parque en Oyster Bay, hay un triángulo de pasto y tréboles entre el estacionamiento y la carretera. No exactamente un césped, ni tampoco tierra abandonada; hay un par de mesas para picnic y un tablero informativo, todo bajo álamos altos. Nunca he visto a nadie en este lugar, a no ser yo y mi familia, cuando les llevé a mirar el tablero.

Cruzándolo el otro día, encontré un gran número de hongos Amanita, todos pateados, machucados, hecho pedazos. ¿Quién hará tal cosa? ¡No le hacían daño a nadie!

Había dos botones, salidos después de que se fueron los vándalos. Eran de unas dos pulgadas de diámetro.

También encontré algunos hongos "puffball", que emiten nubes de esporas cuando están maduros. La primera foto muestra uno ya listo. A un toque suave de mi dedo, le salió un soplo de polvo café.

En la última foto, hay tres, dos todavía escondidos bajo tierra y hojas caídas. Así, blancos completamente por dentro, se pueden comer, y son deliciosos, fritos con mantequilla.

Los dejé en paz. Un episodio de vandalismo es más que suficiente.

A pair of lifers. Mushroom lifers.

I've never seen mushrooms like these before. Puffballs, I see often, in parks, in the woods, in lawns; they're easy to identify, new or old or long gone. At first glance, I thought the first batch of these were old, burst puffballs. But different, somehow.

They have an open pore at the top; our usual puffballs break all at once, usually along the sides.

There were hundreds of these along the shore trail, all about at this stage.

They acted like regular puffballs; when I stepped on them, they released clouds of brown spore dust.

Huddled together in the grass, under dead leaves.

Farther along the trail, I came across more apparent puffballs, but without the top central pores. And when I looked more closely, I realized that they have strong, thick stalks.

The stalks were mostly hidden under the leaves and the soil.

But a few had been exposed, by wind, probably. Not by me.

Cracked and somewhat shrunken cap. And yes, they released spore dust, too.

And these caps have collapsed in on themselves, leaving mainly stalks.

My guide (Audubon) has one photo of a mushroom that looks like the first batch, with the pores at the top: the Buried-stalk Puffball, Tulostoma simulans.

The guide describes them like this: Spore sac: ... roundish to acorn-shaped, with small, tubelike mouth projecting at top; sand-covered, dark reddish-brown. (Their photo shows pale beige mushrooms, no reddish-brown anywhere.) ... Stalk, ... thick, scaly, fibrous rust-brown, often entirely buried.

I didn't know about this, so I didn't see the stalks. I will have to go back tomorrow to dig some up.

The second batch of mushrooms were larger; compare them to the leaves in the photos. I haven't found photos of these anywhere. I'll send photos in to INaturalist and some mushroom identification sites, to see if anyone can id them.

Late early mushrooms

I've been looking for mushrooms since the rains started, but with little luck. So I looked at the last two years' posts; in 2016, I was finding many mushrooms around here since the last week of September, earlier on visits north and west. But in 2017, they started to show up near the end of October, and in greatly reduced numbers.

This year, it looks like we're following last year's schedule. I found a very few last week; half a dozen puffballs in a patch that is usually thick with them, three small brownish ones on Tyee Spit.

And finally, this Wednesday, a short walk near Woodhus Creek turned up a crop of varied 'shrooms.

Down in the moss, a brown mushroom with purplish stripes. With an unidentified critter poking his head out from behind.

One puffball, already gone to spores. There were two others in the vicinity.

Mushrooms often grow in the shadiest, dimmest parts of the woods, and even there, they hide under logs or in the shelter of deep moss. The camera doesn't like this; there's not enough light to get a clean photo. But you can't use flash; most of the light-coloured mushrooms concentrate and reflect all the light, so that everything but the mushroom comes out nicely, but the mushrooms are a featureless glare. Puffballs are the worst. I was lucky to find one in a ray of filtered sunlight.

Tiny, delicate, pinkish mushrooms on a log. With a young sowbug. There were many of these.

A foot-long piece of burnt branch with a topping of moss, nurtured these tiny tongues, most under 1/2 cm. long.

Getting down close. The bases are a greyish blue, the tops pure white.

No mushrooms here. Leaf lichen with fruiting bodies on a dead twig, and Oregon grape leaves.

I met another mushroom hunter along this trail. He was looking for chanterelles, that he has found in large quantities here in previous years. Not this year; he hadn't seen one.

Soggy

I can't resist stepping on ripe puffballs. Doing my part to help with spore dispersal, I say, to excuse my childishness. But this week in the Tyee Spit puffball patch, the puffballs wouldn't puff; they squished and oozed instead.

Cave full of powder, too damp to fly.

Call them oozeballs this year.

The puffball has a unique spore dispersal strategy.  Within the spongy interior, the spores are produced by the trillions.  Eventually, the puffball dries and hardens to the point where it is a papery sac filled with trillions of spores.  When an animal comes along and steps on or bites into the puffball the spores are ejected forcibly.  For small puffballs this can even be accomplished by the impact of falling raindrops. (Field notes)

Anything that grows in the Pacific Northwest has to be able to cope with rain, and puffballs can use it even to get their flying spores airborne. Here's a gif of raindrops causing puffballs to puff.

Once spores are caught by the wind they can be carried very long distances. Spores of a wheat rust have been reported to have been dispersed 1,243 miles (2000 km) by the wind. (Fun Facts about Fungi)

But there can be too much of a good thing. This year's spores aren't going to go far from home.