What is that pasta-like thing growing on the Gabriola forest floor? Doesn’t it look like a baby spaghetti plant? Well. It’s a fungus called clavaria vermicularis or clavaria fragilis. Common names include things like fairy fingers, which is pleasantly evocative. But don’t you think it looks like pasta? Before you conclude that I’m pasta-obsessed, you [...]
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Can you lift a branch that’s bigger than your body? This mushroom can, and has.
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Sometimes I think the Gabriola forest listens to the advice of some sylvan fashion consultant, who whispers things like orange fungus is all the rage for alder trees this fall. Suddenly we’ve got an awful lot of orange crust fungus on old alder. Have you seen it, too? The first photo gives you an idea [...]
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Last year there was medical news about a Gabriola mushroom. Now more on that from the Huffington Post: TEDMED: Can Mushrooms Help the Immune System Fight Cancer? Interview With Paul Stamets, Mycologist. It’s fascinating, and well worth a read. Related: @TEDMED: Catching up with Paul Stamets, mushroom innovator – ted.com.
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If you like fungi and things that sparkle, this photo of a Gabriola polypore might be your kind of thing.
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Got a mystery mushroom from the Gabriola forest? There are lots of things to consider when trying to identify that mushroom. Here’s one thing that will help: take a spore print. Remove the mushroom’s stem, place the cap on a piece of paper, and cover with a bowl or cup. Wait a few hours, or [...]
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There are a lot of small holes in the ground at this time of year. Have you noticed them? They mystified me for a long time, until I noticed that a space that had held a mushroom the day before had become a hole in the ground. I thought maybe some other mushroom fancier was [...]
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Here’s one of the mushrooms that caught our attention in the Gabriola forest today. (The fringe is the remnant of a universal veil).
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Here’s a bit of autumn-coloured beauty in the Gabriola woods: a layered polypore in fall colours. I saw this and immediately changed my mind about cakes with teeth. I’m still not going to decorate cakes (sugar, bleck!), but if I were a cake decorator, I’d now make cakes that would look like fungi. A layer [...]
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At this time of year, here’s what’s showing up all over the place:
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Rather grand, isn’t it? Gabriola’s crop of fall mushrooms are emerging, and this is a swooshy elegant example.
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This is what’s popping up in the Gabriola woods these days. It’s a polypore fungus called Ganoderma oregonense. It looks like it’s made out of marshmallow and varnish! The specimen you see here is about 7 cm tall.
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It looks as if it’s getting ready to take over. This is what we saw in the Gabriola woods today:
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At last: a morel! Last March on Gabriola we had tons of morels, but this is the first one I’ve seen on the island this year.
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This bracket fungus lives in the Gabriola woods. Look at all that white stuff that’s dripped out of the fungus!
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This tree came down a while ago in the Gabriola woods. See where on the trunk the break occurred: just where the bracket fungus grew. (Thanks to the break, I can see how the white fungus has infiltrated the trunk.) Did the fungus weaken the trunk there? Or did it find an already-weak spot, and [...]
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Last year Gabriola’s morel mushrooms appeared at the start of April. I’m waiting for them, frying pan in hand! You too? If you’re a morel fan, you might like this Science Daily article: Genetic Analysis Reveals History, Evolution of an Ancient Delicacy — Morels.
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Here’s what we spotted in the Gabriola woods today: this cauliflower-sized fungus growing on a moss-covered tree. It looks like a mass of roasted marshmallows, I think, especially ones that have browned a bit on one side from being close to the flames. Remarkable.
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