Welcome back to Mushroom Monday, a weekly look at some of PEI’s easy-to-identify fungi. The word ‘mushroom’ usually brings to mind something with a cap and stem, but mushrooms come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colours. The beautiful Coral Fungi are among my favourites.
Coral Fungi can be finger-like or branched, and many look very much like their namesake marine invertebrates. They grow on dead wood or directly from the ground; with colours ranging from dull grey or muted tan to pure white, bright yellow, and vivid pink, purple, or orange, they are often hard to miss. There are hundreds of different species, and although they’re grouped together in guidebooks because of similar growth form, not all are closely related.
Like cap and stem mushrooms, Corals aren’t the fungi itself but rather the fruiting bodies produced by underground, thread-like mycelia. But unlike cap and stem mushrooms (where the spores are on gills, folds, pores, or teeth under the cap), Coral Fungi’s spore-bearing structures are on the surface, covering the entire mushroom or just the upper part depending on species.
One of our most common and easily identified species is Golden Spindles (Clavulinopsis fusiformis, Photo 1). Growing from the ground in fiery yellow or orange clusters, Golden Spindles stands out against the greens and browns of the forest floor. (If you’re of my generation, it may remind you of Heat Miser from the 1970s Christmas movie!). It’s found in both hardwood and softwood forests across the lsland and is hard to mistake for anything else. We do have the related Handsome Club (Clavulinopsis laeticolor), but it’s much smaller and grows singly rather than in groups. Golden Spindles is reportedly very bitter, and so not considered edible.
Coral Fungi aren’t restricted to forests. Smoky Spindles (Clavaria fumosa, Photo 2) is one of the species found in grassy areas as well as woodlands, and it regularly appears in the old fields on my land in Central PEI. This fungus is unbranched, grey to pinkish-grey, and extremely brittle. The slightest touch will break pieces off as you see on the left side of the photo, where my dog’s tail feathers brushed it. Smoky Spindles is said to be edible, but its small size and fragile nature make foraging impractical.
Many Coral Fungi really do look like coral, and it would be easy to believe this White Coral Fungus was found underwater rather than on land (Ramariopsis kunzei, Photo 3). White Coral Fungus grows from the ground and is common in hardwood and mixed wood forests across PEI. This is by no means the only white/whitish Coral Fungus found on the Island, and it can take careful examination to tell them apart. Many (not all) are edible, including the one shown.
There are hundreds of species of Coral Fungi, although only about a dozen or so have been confirmed on the Island. This is the time of year to keep your eye out for these beautiful parts of PEI Untamed!
コメント