Mushrooms Everywhere

Each year, when the rains return, mystical fungal fruitbodies cover the the Bear Creek Wilderness and turn an ordinary walk in the woods into a series of joyful exclamations of discovery.

One rainy day, earlier in the fall, the Bear Creek Explorers and I spent the morning wandering off trail and documenting as best we could each species of mushroom we found.

We looked through my mushroom books around the campfire after lunch to see if we could ID any of them. The species below, Questionable Stropharia, grows in abundance around the village. It’s a particularly beautiful mushroom with what looks like delicate lace hanging from the cap.

I let the kids try their hand at photography using my phone, and the next two pictures are my favorites of what they captured.

We talked about how it’s important to get under the cap to see if the mushroom has gills, pores, teeth or something else. It’s often hard to see what you’re taking a picture of, but sometimes that’s when you stumble upon the most interesting composition!

By the end of that first mushroom day I had 18 species to enter into iNatrualist. Some of them still need ID work- I always appreciate the help from the community to figure out the tricky ones.

Mushrooms have a way of showing up in unexpected places.

Including on the roof of the fort!

We only found one that first week, but soon we were finding that extra weird mushroom named Elvin Saddle throughout the forest. This specie’s fertile surface doesn’t contain gills, pores or teeth- it has a shape all its own.

It’s always fun to discover the first of the chanterelles poking up from the forest floor.

The week before Thanksgiving break, the heart of mushroom season this year, I had each student pick one type of mushroom to focus on. We started that day with some basics about the life cycle of fungi and mushroom terminology. I suggested we try to use the proper terms for the parts of the mushroom, and I really appreciate how they remind me when I forget.

Once each student selected and located a mushroom, they collected their journals and did their sit spot for the day with their mushroom in its natural habitat. I suggested they take note of the ecology of where it was growing. What plants and trees are nearby, is it growing out of the ground or wood? Then, they all brought a specimen back for further examination and documentation.

Bella chose Cat’s Tongue (which I had learned as Earth Tongue) and I was surprised to discover that it actually grows out of decaying wood!

Rheah studied Elvin Saddle, including some dissection to see what was inside.

Ruani focused on both a puff ball, and later some coral mushrooms.

And Terran demonstrated impressive attention to detail as he documented his species of choice- by far the most challenging to identify. (Still TBD)

I had this idea that we would each grow mycelia from our selected mushroom by chopping it up and placing it between cut and boiled cardboard. I’ve done this a couples times before, always with great success. I was hoping the kids could check on their jars and watch the white fungi spread over the break.

This is what I was expecting our cardboard to be covered with:

But two weeks later, I had nothing. Checking with the kids once we were back together- no one got anything! What happened? Well, I did some research, and apparently some cardboard boxes are manufactured with chlorine and antimicrobial chemicals. My guess is we had a problem with our substrate. Next time I’ll search harder for a chemical-free cardboard.

There was some excitement about earth stars- which we found.

Springtails and banana slugs love mushrooms.

A fascinating formation on the back of a dead tree.

After a week in the lodge we got a few good spore prints.

A beautiful cluster on a rotting log.

By last week the puff balls were ready to spread their spores. The kids did a service by walking through the forest and squeezing them.

I thought the chanterelles would be done after the hard freeze, but we found fresh ones that seem to have come up since then. We were focused on other things last week, but without even looking we found a few.

Winter is just around the corner, but who knows- maybe mushroom season has a few more surprises for us yet… gotta love those fabulous, fantastic fungi.