Time Warp: Watkins Regional Park in Fall of 2009

So, I was prepared to post about Watkins Regional Park last week when my new camera arrived; instead I cheated and posted about the new camera itself. That has worked to my advantage, as I ended up visiting Watkins yesterday, and took snapshots of some of the same things I photographed last time, about a year and a half ago.

I didn't really take any shots at the nature center last time out, so I'll start with the mushrooming this time. Yesterday's trip featured Polyporous squamosus (dryad's saddle), several LBMs, and some additional polypores. What was the Fall mushrooming like?

First, I found Amanita muscaria formosa, the "American" subspecies of the fly mushroom, or fly agaric. There is ongoing discussion about how to separate subspecies, and the nominate subspecies is red rather than yellow, but I am nonetheless very confident in my identification of this specimen. If you see this, please don't eat it.

No matter the season, polypores are gregarious. I rarely try to identify beyond "some polypore" unless I suspect it's something of particular interest.

This hen of the woods mushroom (Grifola frondosa) was enormous but too rotten to eat. The monster was around three feet across.

I thought these sulfur tufts (Naemotoloma fasciculare) were beautiful. They're now my excuse to introduce you to the concept of a synonym as the term is used in biology. It has a specific meaning in the field - a synonym is another binomial name which refers to the same species, usually because there are ongoing arguments as to how the species should be classified. My favorite mushroom site has this in genus Hypholoma.

Ah, food. These oyster mushrooms became one heck of a dinner when we got home. One of my first mycological feasts, in fact. I'll never get tired at looking at this set of photos.

Despite the boring appearance and lackluster picture, I was pumped when I found this fungus. I had hoped this belonged to the genus Termitomyces.  These unusual fungi grow only from termite mounds, and the genus includes the largest mushroom species in the world. They have a strange symbiotic relationship with the termites. Unbeknownst to me until later, the family of termites, and therefore the genus of mushrooms, is not found in this area.

So yeah, fungal life was abundant during both successful Watkins trips. I think the species I've discussed and shown provide a good survey of the way fruiting mushroom species vary with season.  Moving on, I want to share some photos of the beaver pond as we discovered it around 18 months ago. It almost looks like a different pond.

The pond. (Compare to yesterday's photo with the same caption, taken from a similar location)

Here's a shot of the beaver lodge when it seemed to still be in use (well, by beavers). Remember its current occupant?

This is the accompanying dam. Although I didn't shoot it yesterday, it was quite grown over as well. This again leads me to suspect that the beavers are making their current home elsewhere.

This time, instead of a decently-captured boring thing (a big empty field) I'll leave you with a cool but poorly photographed thing (this Araneus marmoreus, or marbled orb-weaver spider).

Edible Mushrooms in the Capital Area, Part 2

The flip side of "mushrooming is dangerous" is "the right mushrooms are delicious and healthy." They can occupy a variety of culinary niches, and are low-calorie options. Some have been shown to be quite good for your heart. Even if you're not a vegetarian, eating less meat can be a wise choice, and many mushrooms are wonderful as meat alternatives. Mushrooming is a risk-reward activity, but as with anything else the practiced application of knowledge and patience mitigates the risk. Done properly (which means heeding all those warnings), mushroom hunting gives the reward of an improved diet with the risk of occasional digestive upset.  This sounds better than the risk of dying, right?

There is one more mushroom-related practice I should touch on if I'm interested in the responsible distribution of information. "Shrooming," "doing 'shrooms," or whatever one chooses to call, ahem, 'recreational' mushrooming can also be dangerous. I'm not preaching here, because I'm not talking about the psilocybin itself (harmless in the quantities found in mushrooms, unless you count the hallucinations). This pastime has the same issues as eating wild mushrooms for food - many that will get you high are hard to distinguish from other species that will kill you or make you sick. Amanita muscaria (fly agaric or the fly mushroom - that mushroom with the white spots in all the cartoons) will get one high in Europe but just make one miserable in the States. So, if you're going to get high on mushrooms, learn to ID them yourself. Trusting someone else to find the right ones for you is like trusting a stranger on a street corner to retrieve your correct medicine from a bucket of mixed and unlabeled pills. Also keep in mind that mushrooms which will kill you in tiny doses are legal while those which will only get you high if you eat them like potato chips are illegal. Laws do very by state; some make more sense than others.

And now, on to the photos! Again, all specimens pictured below were collected within a couple of hours driving distance of Washington DC. All are edible for those who have adventurous pallets.

Entoloma abortivum - this is actually two mushrooms, one of which is a parasite on the other.  The honey mushroom (Armillaria mellea) and a species of Entoloma meet. Biologists are still studying which is the host and which is the parasite.  Either way, if you find the brainy-looking part you know you can eat the whole mess - if you dare.

A second photo of E. abortivum, this time featuring the honey mushroom instead of the entoloma. Again, note the distinctive brain-looking globs.

Speaking of the honey mushroom (Armillaria mellea), here it is on its own. That white rot on the wood is pretty distinctive. If you're a sucker for technicalities, you should check out this article.

If you want raw volume in your mushroom meal, not much can match Grifola frondosa (the hen of the woods). That's not a camera trick - my finger is just about touching this monster and the camera is in my other hand. Unfortunately every specimen I've found has been too rotten to bring home.

Polyporus squamosus (dryad's saddle) can also be huge, but by the time it attains this size it isn't quite as tender and delicious. Fantasy artists like to depict sprites and gnomes and such hanging out on these. Oddly enough, when you cut them they have a distinct watermelon smell.

Pleurotus ostreatus (the oyster mushroom) is a mycophagist's dream. It's delicious, gregarious, common, and can be found almost year round. Its lookalikes (assuming you get a spore print, that is) are all related and also edible. This is the second most common commercial mushroom behind the white buttons (Agaricus bisporus, if you care to know).

This hairy-looking oddball is the old man of the woods (Strobilomyces floccopus). Fitting that the species name looks something like the equally funny-looking 'octopus.' Well, I thought so, anyway. Despite appearances, this is actually a very tasty mushroom.

They say everything tastes like chicken. Well, the chicken mushroom, Laetiporus cincinnatus et al, really does. Well, it can be made to. This beautiful mushroom can be prepared in the kitchen in much the same way poultry can, and with less worry of food poisoning.

I have by no means exhausted the range of edible mushrooms in this region of the US. Among those not pictured are fungi with such colorful names as the train wrecker and angel wings. Dozens more have not even crossed my radar yet. I've only been at it a couple of years, but mycology has opened my eyes to the variety of forms life cane take.