Big orange mushrooms at the zoo

[urbpan]

There are several bunches of big orange mushrooms at the zoo this week! These are jack-o-lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus olearius illudens). Supposedly they glow in the dark, but I took some into a darkroom and they weren't glowing. They are not good to eat.





Jack-o-lanterns grow from the bases of trees or from buried tree roots and can be recognized by their orange color, gills descending the stalk somewhat ("decurrent"), and by their growth pattern of several stalks merging to grow from the same base.


As they dry out they get a darker more brick red color.


Another big orange mushroom growing at the zoo--and anywhere there are large oak trees--is the chicken mushroom Laetiporus sulphureus. This one grows from higher up on the tree, forming several shelves of stalkless mushrooms that have pores and not gills. Many people like to eat this species, but some people have trouble digesting it. I saw some at the Jamaica Plain farmers market last week for 20 dollars a pound.

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

it's been a great year for sulfur shelf (my preferred common name for what you call "chicken mushroom"). i should be selling it :)

are you sure your jacks-o-lantern aren't illludens, which i've heard is less luminescent?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

l. Sulfur shelf is better than "Chicken-of-the-woods" which bothers me, irrationally. Do you still call it Sulfur shelf when it's the pink and white variety (cincinnatus, I think, without looking it up)?

2. Oh yeah, you're right, olearius is the European species. Thanks for the tip!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

in fact i do still call it sulfur shelf, i confess -- even though my best find this year was too infant to be really shelf-shaped and was almost entirely white, and was growing down low, so was almost certainly cincinnatus. i think i do this because i find the name most descriptive for novices getting a grip on what's safe to eat out there; they can catch up with the fact that it comes in white or pink later on, and call it whatever they like :) (i don't care for chicken-of-the-woods myself; i think that sounds like a bird name of some sort, not that i know birds very well.)

i've certainly heard of olearius in the usa -- there's a pic of a glowing specimen at http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/oct97.html that i think came from illinois? but i've never gotten a firm id of one myself. (nor, i admit, have i spent any time in the dark looking for one to luminesce; in this ecosystem i've just enjoyed foxfire, esp. around walden pond.)

[morgi.livejournal.com]

Omphalotus? Their name has something to do with navels?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Good call! According to Arora's Mushrooms Demystified, Omphalotus means "resembling an umbilicus."

[morgi.livejournal.com]

I only had one semester of Greek (and didn't do so well) but I know random useless words.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

that reminds me, there's this glow in the dark mushroom up in northern vt, kinda looks like gray lichen during the day, grows on rotting trees. kinda green-blue. could never get pictures of it, lack of good enough camera and it's pretty dim. good way to walk around camp at night though - built in boundary markers :)

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[didotwite]

OK, homesick for fall :). Hi, I'm Dido. My IRL friend callipygian80 recommended you as an LJ friend and good read. Look forward to more!

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Yay! welcome, I added you back.