Mushroom Log 2013

A blank page to be filled by this season's finds.

4/7  It has been a snowy winter and a cold start to spring.  We finally are scheduled to have 10 nights of temperatures above freezing.  I am starting to think about mushrooms.  Fabrizio Bordo has gone to Savona Italy, to visit his relatives, and he sent some pictures.

5/6   This has been a record cold spring here in the Northeast.  Also very little rain.  So the mushroom season is delayed.  On 5/2 I went to Pisgah Woods in Northboro and checked on the large Black Birch which yielded a large Chaga in 2006.  It has stopped producing Chaga but is still alive and releasing new leaves.  I hope it dies before I do, since I would like to get better pictures of the fruiting body of Inonotus obliquus.  On 5/5 I went to Oxford, where there is a good stand of Hemlock, and found a few Ganoderma tsugae buds.  Also found a small tree that had very interesting flowers blooming.  Pictures

5/18  Dry weather continues in Central Massachusetts.  I am exploring a new location, in Grafton, that Fabrizio Bordo told me about.  It is interesting in that it looks like it has not been logged in quite a while.  There are many large trees on this site.  Also unusual is that Black Birch is the only kind of birch that I saw on this site.  There are quite a few of them that are damaged by Nectria and I found some that look like they had Chaga but it has dropped off long time ago.  I found about three dead birch which I plan to track to see if they will sprout Inonotus obliquus fruiting bodies.  Pictures

5/21  Drizzly weather started and I decided on an experiment to see if I could grow some Wine-cap next to my garden.  I went out and found some six dried out specimens where I found them last year in Shrewsbury.  I went out and bought 3 bags of cedar mulch mainly because that looked like what the mushrooms in Shrewsbury were growing in.  I made a bed about 4x6' and about a foot thick.  I buried the stem pieces and caps in the mulch.  Before I did this I washed the caps in boiled and cooled water spiked with sugar and salt as Stamets recommended.  This I let this stand overnight and the next day the water was murky as if the spores had started to sprout into mycelium.  I poured it out over the mulch.  With this drizzly weather it appears to be an ideal time to start a mushroom garden.  Pictures.

5/24  We have had drizzly weather for 6 days.  We got a total of 1.25" of rain during that time.  Went out with an umbrella to see what I could find.  I visited the Williams Preserve and found 2 interesting mushrooms.  Pictures in two pages.

5/30  Went to Williams Preserve since that it is the only place I find mushrooms.  Again I saw plenty of the Pholiota veris but also found one Platterful Mushroom plus 3 Pluteus of some kind.  We had about a half an inch of rain so the colors are somewhat washed out.  Three pages of Pictures

6/9  On June 7 and 8 we had a tropical storm pass through dumping 4" of rain in the area.  This should kick start the mushroom season.  Today I noticed a Bird Nest Fungus popped out in the same area where it grew last year.  There must be some wood under the soil from which it is growing.  You usually find them growing on small dead branches.  Pictures

6/10  Riding by a stump in someone's yard I spotted an Oyster.  At Williams Preserve I found a mushrooms I never saw before.  Pictures

6/11  In the past 24 hours we got 2.13" more rain.  This should make mushrooms pop out all over.

6/12  Went out and checked a couple of spots.  No mushrooms anywhere.  Maybe they got drowned?

6/14  Yesterday and today we got 2.09" more of rain!  I see what looks like King Bolete reported from Canada.  I checked two spots where I found King Bolete last year but found none.  The only mushrooms I found was a slug damaged Oak Loving Collybia and 3 Bitter Bolete.  At least the boletes are starting to appear.  The slugs must be dying of famine!

6/15  Went back to Williams Preserve and took a few more pictures of the Black Jelly Drops to get a better focus.  Also I took a sample leaf of the type of oak they were growing on.  I do not recognize the oak.  If you know name of the oak, please let me know.  While there I looked for other mushrooms but still could not find any.  Updated page.

7/15  Now we are having another heat wave.  Today I received a message from Andre Nundel who supplied the name to the bush in flower that I found on 5/6/13.  Check it out here.
I have not found much in the way of mushrooms lately. So, that is the reason for the silence.  Right now we are in the midst of a 6 day heat wave.  The few mushrooms that pop up are immediately slugged and the stem is hollowed out by worms. The critters have to eat too!

7/20  At last I processed the information for a bolete that I found in the yard on 7/9/13.  I identified it as Boletus griseus, and this is the date when I first saw one of these.  Pictures

7/22  The heat wave continues and no rain, so I have not gone out into the woods much.  Fabrizio Bordo is taken for a walk in the woods by his dog every day and reports that he found quite a few Lactarius.  I wanted to use some of the stains I bought to see how they will effect the appearance of the spores under the microscope.  Out on the lawn by my building I found a Russula which I have found before under pine and I identified it as Russula ventricosipes.  I checked Lincoff's guide and he gives Russula ventricosipes only as a footnote under Russula lauroccerasi, so I got confused.  But after studying the spores I think I made the correct ID.  Pictures.

7/23  Today I found a mature Boletus auripes in the yard and decided to do a detailed study of it.  Pictures.

7/24  I updated the above page and added page 2 to show what younger Boletus auripes look like.

7/28 Went out for a few hours to Westboro to look for edible mushrooms but found none.  On Talbot Trail found only one lonely, tiny, white Amanita about 2" tall.  Then I went to the nearby Walkup Reservation and found a "interesting" mushrooms.  Pictures

7/29  Today I heard from a graduate student at Clark University in Worcester.  He is studying boletes which are reported to be poisonous such as the Red Mouth Bolete.  I learned from him that there is possibly another bolete which grows in our area that is suspected of gastric distress and even death.  I never found Boletus huronensis.  It is reported to be found in hemlock forests in Maine in this article:
http://namyco.org/publications/mcilvainea/v21/Boletus_huronensis.html
Also I heard from Bill Neill who has found it in NH hemlock woods.  It is a summer bolete so the season is fast ending for this bolete.  In the article above they say that an expert miss identified one as a King Bolete and had his intestines thoroughly cleansed :o)

8/2  On the last day of July I went to a local spot and did find a few mushrooms though not the King Bolete that I was hoping to find.  The most common mushroom was the Velvet-footed Pax.  I am experimenting wetting the spores with different chemicals to see what difference there is in appearance.  This time I used KOH and iron sulfate.  I got the iron sulfate in a garden center.  This is what they use to kill moss.  It is actually Ferrous Sulfate Monohydrate.  I soaked some of it in a quart jar of distilled water for a while then strained it through a coffee filter.  I noticed the different stain that it left on the spores.  The white spores from the Grisette were not visible when wetted with KOH but were nicely visible when wetted with iron sulfate.  Four pages of pictures.

8/3  Went to Cormier Woods in Uxbridge.  Found a polypore that I have not seen since 2006.  Found another that I have never seen.  I finally found an Emetic Russula that was photogenic and free of bugs.  Four pages of pictures.

8/7  I went out to Grafton to see if I could find some bolete to test my new supply of chemicals that I bought.  I bought some KOH flakes and made a 10% solution to use on mushrooms.  I bought moss killer in a garden supply and made some iron sulfate solution.  I just received Lugol's solution, by mail, to try and see if I can use that to test spores until one of you will send me some Melzer's reagent.  I found no boletes but did find two Lactarius.  The first one I am familiar with, it was the Corrugated Milky but the second was mostly white with a short stem and had a very peppery taste.  The guide calls it acrid, but I say it is hot as hell!  I wanted it to be the Peppery Milky but it did not fit the description.  Take a look at the tag I put on it.  Pictures

8/17  We had some good rain about a week ago so when I went out on the 15th I found quite a nice variety of mushrooms.  It took me two days to work on them but I am finally finished.  If you disagree with any of my identifications please let me know what it should br.  I put each mushroom on a separate page so there are 7 pages total for these mushrooms from Grafton MA.  Pictures

8/18  Checking the weather forecast I did not see any rain predicted for the next 10 days so I decided to go back to the Grafton site and see what else I could find before everything dries up.  I found more than twice the number of mushrooms than I found the last time.  So it will take quite a while to process them.  This time I decided to post a page for each mushroom as soon as I have it up, even if I am still working on the ID.  If you know what it is, let me know, please.  It all started by me finding something that was alive sometime before and was still standing on an abandoned paved road.  I was not even sure if it was a mushroom :o)  When I scraped some of the powdery stuff on the top onto a slide and looked at it, it looked like spores to me.  So here is the15 pages  in this series.  Pictures

8/22  Went back to the wet site in Grafton again.  It was a lot drier than the last time.  The puddles dried out so it was bad for the frogs that lived in them but it was good for the garter snakes who were having a fest.  I got an update on the growth of the Cauliflower Mushroom and found a few new mushrooms.  Take a look at 8 pages of pictures starting with this one.

8/26  Heard that a Maitake was found in the Hubbardston area.  They are early this year.

8/27  I am surprised that some mushrooms continue to pop up and grow even though it has been hot and dry and we have had no rain for about 2 weeks.  This morning it rained in my area.  My gauge says .63".  That should help.  I went out yesterday to check on the Gymnopilus suspects in Grafton.  I found them with their caps open and the largest cap was 3.5".  They produced good spore prints and I was able to ID them as Gymnopilus validipes, a hallucinogenic mushroom.

8/28  Yesterday I was in a mood to experiment with Lugol's Reagent and some stains.  I saw it indicate amyloid spores in some mushrooms so I wanted to find and test some non amyloid spores.  Silvia has mailed me some spores from the Shaggy Parasol, which has dextrinoid spores, so that will complete my testing of Lugol's for the 3 basic reactions to a reagent.  I went out and found two mushrooms that are reported to have non amyloid spores.  Results on two pages.

8/29  Went to Uxbridge site to see what I could find since we had .67" of rain a couple of days ago.  After I got done I decided to drive around and see what I could spot on the side of the country roads and peoples' yards.  I was looking for a Parasol Mushroom so that I could run a dextrinoid spore test.  Soon I was lost.  That is why I have a GPS in my car.  I went on a side road and hooked up the GPS.  I spotted what looked like a small brown mushroom growing on a mossy lawn and I snatched it up.  I was surprised that it looked half dried out yet was not wormy.  Tasted so bad no worm wanted to eat it?  Pictures

8/30  Fabrizio is off in Maine this weekend so I decided to check his favorite site in Millbury to see if I could find a Parasol Mushroom.  I did not find it but did find a lot of Honey Mushrooms so I brought some home to cook and eat.  Pictures

9/16  The weather continues to be dry.  The mushrooms are hard to come by.  I have been keeping busy learning about using stains on the spores to see more of the spore detail under the microscope.  I use whatever mushrooms I find, which are nothing to brag about or photograph :o)  I have lso ordered a new darkfield/lightfield microscope with a better digital camera than that on my old scope.  Another toy!

Yesterday the Boston Mycological Club held a foray at the Cormier Woods in Uxbridge.  The mycology people from Harvard and Clark University also attended.  I went to one of these a couple of years back and found it interesting seeing what the hoard of hunters found.  I did not read the flyer announcing the foray very carefully and assumed that it would be held at 10:30 am as the last time.  I was there at 10:30 am but there were only two other cars in the lot.  One of these was a member of BMC who made the same mistake as I.  It turns out that the foray was scheduled for 1:30 pm.  So he and I held our own hunt by exploring a couple of trails.  I was surprised at how many mushrooms we found considering that we had less than half an inch of rain in the past week.  He was walking in the lead when he spotted an interesting bolete right in the middle of the narrow trail. I got so excited  on seeing it, I forgot to take pictures.  I never saw anything like it.  It was basically dark brown with purple tint.  It was basically the same color cap, stem and pores.  It looked like the stem had dark  scabers on it.  I told him that Mitchell Nuhn, a graduate student at Clark was looking for dark pored mushrooms for his study and might be interested in that mushroom.  He agreed to show it to Dr. David Hibbett and ask him if Mitch would be interested in having it.  Today I found out that Mitch did see that mushroom and told me that it was identified as Sutorius eximius aka Tylopilus eximius aka Leccinum eximius.  I found a picture from Japan that looks very similar to what I saw.

The coloration was very similar but no spots on the cap.  Also the pores were about the same color as the cap. 

I took a break after our 2 loop foray to go home and eat lunch.  When I returned at 1:30 pm there was a traffic jam with all the cars that came to the foray.  I could not find a parking spot within a reasonable walking distance so I went explored another new trail that I found out about from the caretakers of the conservation land.  It was a nice trail but had few mushrooms.  It was just too dry.  I was pooped out and decided to go home.

9/23  After .28" of rain I decided to go back to Cormier Woods to see if I could find another of those Sutorius eximius.  No such luck.  I did explore some of the trail that was new to me and found one old Maitake, some Dyer's Polypore and a few Russula.  Enough for spores for the new Microscope I got.  I was impressed by the quality of pictures produced by Fabrizio's Amscope that he paid something like $250 for.  I bought one that cost $445 with a camera that has a mechanical stage plus is darkfield condenser and LED lighting.  Here is the scope:
http://www.amscope.com/t340b-dk-led.html

9/24 Today I went to the nearby West Hill Park and found 3 prime Birch Bolete.  I saw some painted Bolete and Dotted Stalk Bolete.  I was looking for Kings but found none.  Just before leaving the park I spotted 3 yellow Fly Agaric growing on the side of the road so I went over to check if there were those Peppery Bolete growing with them, that Mitchell Nuhn is interested in for his study.  Since I do not remember finding them before I had no real idea what I was looking for.  About 18" from a Fly Agaric, in its prime, I saw 2 small tan colored caps.  From the top they looked like gilled mushrooms.  I picked the larger just to see if it had pores or gills.  It had reddish brown pores!  Aha!!  I went home and made up a page with the pictures and asked Mitch to look and tell me if it was what he was looking for.  It was!  He is coming over tomorrow to pick it up.  Pictures

9/25    This morning I went back and got the other Peppery Bolete, the Fly Agaric by which it was growing and another bolete in the area that I found.  I put the new pictures on the second page from the link above.  Then I started a new pages to show some other interesting mushrooms that I ran into in the last few days.

9/26  Went to Sutton and looked in the hemlock woods.  The few mushrooms I found were growing on the side of a paved road at the bottom of an incline where the water runoff from the road pooled.  There were several Sweet Tooth mushrooms and some white, small, mushrooms with decurrent gills.  In the woods things were dry and no sign of mushrooms.  No sense going out now until we get some rain.  The weather channel is not predicting any rain in the next 10 days.  It is time to go hunt Chaga!

10/3   The draught continues.  The lawns are brown and dry.  I am exploring for likely places to go to if we ever get rain.  Also I am hunting for Chaga as I explore.  A neighbor brought me a flier today about a mushroom talk and walk to be held at Upton State Forest on October 20 starting at 11 am.  Lawrence Millman is the one that was hired to this.  He is supposed to be a great authority on wild mushrooms amongst other things.  When I was a member of Boston Mycological Club he was one of their longtime members though I never saw him at any of the forays.  I suspect that this talk and walk is geared for beginners and the walk is limited to only 18 people.  The talk is open to all.  The flyer does not give any contact information so there is no way to pre register for the walk.  The event is supposed to be held at the Upton State Forest headquarters.  I went up there to find out more about this event but there was no one there.  It looks like the building opens only when special events are scheduled.  The address for the place is 205 Westboro Rd., Upton MA, if you want to use your GPS to guide you to the place.  If we get some rain before that time I will drop in to hear Millman's speech.  His highest degree is a PhD in Literature.
I have started exploring Upton State forest today.  I found a small Chaga and an old Pigskin Puffball.  I will take a look at the spores of the puffball.

10/7  The last two days we got some unexpected rain.  My rain gauge recorded 1.89" so far and they are predicting more today and tonight.  Maybe we will some new mushrooms popping out in a day or two.

About 2 month's ago Silvia Uatari contacted me about a mushroom that keeps coming up in her yard.  She took some pictures and provided the spore print with her best ID of Macrolepiota rachodes or the Shaggy Parasol.  That ID looked good to me except for the short stem and the bulb at the base.  The mushroom guide mentioned that the stem can be as short as 2" and some specimens are found with large bulbs at the stem base.  Today a second fruiting was up in her yard and I went over to look at them myself.  I picked up a dozen or so to harvest the spores.  The stems were truly short and had a huge bulb at the base.  Also I noticed that the stem veil did not move up and down.  Lincoff's guide mentioned that there is a variety in California that has a large bulb at the base, so I was suspecting that it might be the California variety.  I learned on the Internet that the mycologists have moved the Shaggy Parasol to a different genus.  It is now called Chlorophyllum rhacodes and the variety in California rated a new specie name of  Chlorophyllum brunneum.  I think that is what is growing in Sylvia's yard.  Has anyone else found this specie in the Northeast?  My pictures and spore information, on 3 pages.

10/8  Went to West Hill Park to see if any more Peppery Bolete came up.  Found none.  I did find a few Fly Agaric that popped up but no accompanying bolete, yet.  Will check in a couple of days again.  I did find my first King of the season.  Also a large Birch Bolete and a large young Maitake.  Pictures

10/9  Explored a few spots around town.  Pictures

10/10   Went back to West Hill Park to look for more Peppery Bolete for Mitch.  Found many A. muscaria but no Peppery Bolete.  I did find 2 old Kings growing side by side.  I bring them home and toss them in the woods by some White Pine hoping to have them sprout there in a few years.  I found a few other interesting mushrooms.  Pictures on 4 pages.

10/11  Went back to West Hill Park to look for Kings.  None wanted to be found.  I always check the spots that have or had A. muscaria to see if any Peppery Bolete came up.  None yet.  A mile or so away from the first spot where I found Peppery Bolete I spotted a small mushroom growing by a pine snag about 8" in diameter.  The top did not look like the once I found the first time so I just nudged it with my walking stick.  Then I saw the red pores.  Since the stem was broken, anyway, I bit off a piece to see it it was peppery.  It was but mildly so.  Mitch probably has found enough for his purposes so I put it out for a spore print.  Though the cap was only 1.25" in diameter the pores were well developed and hope they will produce some spores.  Pictures

10/16  Been out every day looking for mushrooms for Mitchell Nuhn's study but not finding any.  Today though I found a few mushrooms worth taking pictures off starting with 3 Kings.  There are 4 pages of pictures.

10/17  West Hill Park, in Northbridge, is the only place that has any kind of mushrooms growing but the Rangers will not allow anyone taking anything but photos from the park.  I have had a few run-ins with the Rangers and find that they are very good at making up new rules on the fly.  Now that the park is closed for the season the the Rangers come to harass visitors only occasionally.  A few days back I saw 4 young men working on a stump by the park road.  There were two older women watching them.  I walked up to one woman and asked her what was going on.  She said that the young men were Eagle Scouts and their project was to determine the age of the old pine that was cut down by counting the growth rings.  Their plan was to dig out one of the main roots and cut out a section so that they could count the rings.  I asked her why they did not just cut off a slice off the top of the 3.5 ft diameter stump to expose a fresh view of the rings and count them.  She said they wanted to do that but the Ranger would not allow that.  His stated reason was that it would destroy the "integrity" of the stump.  I went several days later and checked what was accomplished.  Here is what I saw.

It is getting dry again so there are fewer mushrooms.  One kind of Lactarius seams to be everywhere growing under pine.  Since it is everywhere I decided to try to ID it.  Pictures

Mushrooming Log 2012
Mushrooming Log 2011
Mushrooming Log 2010
Mushrooming Log 2009
Mushrooming Log 2008
Mushrooming Log 2007
Mushrooming Log 2006
Mushrooming Log 2005
Mushrooming Log 2004