Plicaturopsis crispa. THE 2021 XMAS MUSHROOM COUNT
Lawrence Millman Photos by Deana Tempest Thomas
I
t’s a popular belief among certain individuals that fungi north of the Mason-Dixon Line disappear in the
winter, perhaps migrating south like snowbirds, then magically reappear in the spring. “Unfortunately, the mushroom season is nearly over,” an officer in a northeastern mycological club recently announced to her group in early November. To which I riposted: “Au contraire, it’s just beginning…” Whether the mushroom season
begins in November or not, it reaches its peak for me during the annual Christmas Mushroom Count. While the somewhat better-known Audubon Christmas Bird Count occurs during a three-week period at a variety of locales, the Christmas Mushroom Count takes place on a single day at the Wachusett Meadow Audubon Sanctuary in Princeton, Massachusetts. Te most fungi I’ve documented during these counts was 93, and the least was 46. I might add that none of the species I
36 FUNGI Volume 15:1 Winter 2022
documented was hanging out at the Audubon bird feeder. Te 2021 Christmas Mushroom
Count took place on Monday, December 27, with the temperature hovering just below freezing. Its mycologically- minded participants included Joe Warfel, Deana Tempest Tomas, Joe Choiniere, Loren Hoekzema, Christine Gagnon, and Jimmy Beard, along with yours truly. Te question “Is it edible?” was not uttered a single time during the foray, not even when we encountered an oyster mushroom that had seen better, far better days. Shortly after the foray began, we
discovered fruitings of the so-called Veiled Panus, Tectella patellaris, on several adjacent deciduous branches. Veiled in its youth but not when it’s mature, this reddish-brown, clamshell- shaped species with radiating gills is either uncommon or overlooked— probably the latter. Most of the times I’ve found it have been in the winter, a season when fungi, especially small ones, tend to be overlooked. Soon we were finding the usual
wood-inhabiting suspects: Panellus stipticus, Trametes versicolor, Stereum ostrea, Calycina citrina, Daedaleopsis confragosa, Plicaturopsis crispa, Hydnoporia olivacea, Lophodermium pinastri, etc. Another usual suspect was Mycosphaerella colorata,a Dothidiomycete that infects mountain laurel leaves. Quipped Joe Choiniere: “Rare is the mountain laurel leaf that’s not decorated by this species in the winter.” You might be surprised to learn
that the erstwhile Cordyceps species Tolypocladium capitatum often shows up on Christmas Mushroom Counts. Indeed, Jimmy Beard found a quite nice specimen rising a few inches above the more or less frozen ground. In our efforts to excavate the Elaphomyces it was parasitizing, we ended up breaking that false truffle into several dirt- encased fragments. I seemed to hear the Tolypocladium utter this lament: “Without a host, I’m now a nobody.” We found several blackened Russulas, but since dead birds can be included in a Christmas Bird Count, I put the
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