I think I’ve found an agarikon fungus on Gabriola. Please take a look at the photos and tell me what you think.

agarikon?agarikon?

I blogged about agarikon last month, and have been looking around for agarikon on Gabriola ever since. Who could resist looking for such a rare and interesting thing? I wondered if I’d find any, as Paul Stamets says it’s an exceedingly rare mushroom and that it grows exclusively in old growth forests — though that’s not where I found the thing that I suspect is agarikon.

The fungus I found is on a massive stump. The tree that used to be there was a very large old-growth tree, probably a Douglas Fir. And, hmm, this fungus is rather large, isn’t it? To give you an idea of how large, I took off my gumboot to add to the second photo. (And yes, I did hop around on one foot in a most ridiculous manner while taking that photo.) The gumboot is 41 cm tall.

OK, now on to other people’s photos of agarikon. Wikimedia Commons has two photos. A German page has one photo – see bild 4 there. An Italian page has two photos. A page about fungi in Stanley Park has a few photos. (I can only hope that the people who labelled these photographs got it right.) Oh, and here’s another agarikon, this one in a Youtube video: Saving Agrikon.

The photos seem to show some variation in the shape the fungus takes.

So, what do you think? Have I found an agarikon on Gabriola? I can’t think what else it could be, and the fungus I found seems to meet the profile of Fomitopsis officinalis.

Update:

Ha! Finally found a bit about this fungus in a mushroom identification book (National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms), which will help a lot. There it’s listed as Larch Polypore. The book says it’s also known as Laricifomes officinalis, Fomes laricis, and Fomes officinalis. Now I need a spore print, and hmm, maybe a microscope. Sigh. Would still like opinions on the photos from anybody who would recognize this particular polypore.

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