Polypores, here and there

Wherever I go in the woods, there are polypores.

Red belted polypore, above Elk Falls.

Sweaty young polypore, on the shores of the beaver pond.

Strange grouping, broken or eaten. On the side hill beside the Campbell River.

Another sweaty one. Behind the beaver dam, I think.

Fungal leftovers

The markings on a log near the shore caught my eye.

White spalting, aka white rot

The entire log was covered with these. The patches were slightly raised above the wood, and spongy to the touch. Although it was a dry day, the whole log felt damp. I couldn't find any of the mushrooms which commonly cause white rot, like turkey tail or other bracket fungi.

This is the work of a microscopic fungus or possibly a bacterium that eats the pigmented part (the lignin) of the cell walls of the wood. The lignin functions as part of the support structure of the wood; as the fungus removes it, the wood becomes soft. Since the lignin also works as waterproofing, this whitened wood is also more absorbent.

Brown rot destroys the cellulose in the cell wall, leaving the pigmented lignin behind, so the wood disintegrates into little chips, but stays dark. White rotted wood holds together longer.

Brown rot in a stump. The wood is dry and flaky and crumbles in my hand.

Mushroom sampler

November is a good month to look for mushrooms and other fungi in the temperate rain forest. Even when the sun shines, it's never warm enough to dry the ground, but the temperatures are still usually above freezing. Every time I stopped, crossing the island this Friday, I found mushrooms almost with every step I took, and even up the trunks of trees.

And they're not the mushrooms I'm used to, from the Bella Coola or the Lower Fraser valleys. Of 20 some-odd different species I found, I recognized two, a yellow witches' butter (edible), and an amanita (not). I'll be digging through mushroom books and the web for a few days, trying to identify the others.

Witches butter on an old, burnt stump, with cladonia lichens and mosses.

Amanita, probably muscaria. 

Generic 'shroom. These are hard to identify, because they're so similar to many others.

Really strange mushrooms. The cap seems to be melting, but I didn't see any completely deliquesced ones. And the stems are all twisty. These were growing in semi-tame land; beside the road at the Park entrance.

Very tiny, tall mushroom. The evergreen needles give an idea of the size.

More tomorrow, after I've done my homework.