3:00 snapshot #1745: Tuesday, PLUS: Mushrooms of Coronado Springs

[urbpan]

Disney's Coronado Springs is a hotel and conference center complex composed of a dozen or so buildings surrounding an artificial lake. There are many plantings of palms and other exotic tropical plants, in well-maintained mulch bed. The week I was there the weather was hot and humid with almost daily downpours in the afternoon. I thought I might see some mushrooms. I was right.



Fortunately despite being a Disney site, there were relatively few freaky life-size animated characters around. This topiary of José Carioca had some surprises at his feet.


A group of medium sized mushrooms, reminiscent of Hypholoma sp. perhaps.


These slender beauties look like Parasola plicatilis but then again lots of species do.


If they are a different species, I suggest "pleated nipples" as a common name.


While I expected to see wood decay mushrooms in the mulch, I was a bit surprised to see these charming boletes, which are almost certainly mycorhizzally symbiotic with the palm tree.


All the same field markings except for the symmetry--this is probably just an aberrantly shaped member of the same species.


And this one, which needed a little assistance to stand upright, is probably also the same, but emerged several days earlier than the others, and is showing its age with its convex cap and blue bruised tube surface.


I smelled this before I saw it. I actually passed by it several times before I realized, "hey there's a stinkhorn somewhere around here." (Phallus ravenelli)


This is the next day--the first stinkhorn is spent and flaccid, while the new ones are misshapen and fused. They don't always look like their pictures in the field guides!


Not far away, the mulch supports a second species of stinkhorn fungus! (Mutinus caninus)


And of course there was plenty of lichenized fungi around, making the palm trees look lush and jungly.