Mushrooms at the zoo: unraveling a mystery of my own making

At the Children's Zoo there's a bench--now in a keeper area away from the public--which is growing mushrooms. The wood is rotten and falling away from a thick layer of green paint. The mushrooms look familiar to me. Typically the wood used to make fences and benches is pine, often treated with compounds which prevent decay by insects and fungi. A few species of mushroom-producing fungi are reliably the first to colonize such well-defended resources. I've been trying to figure this one out, and keep confusing myself.


Woody or leathery mushrooms that grow directly from dead wood, and produce spores from a surface of many little holes are called "polypores." A number of species have pores which are elongated into structures that more or less resemble the gills of gilled mushrooms. This is where the confusion comes in. I'm pretty sure I've mis-identified this mushroom on this journal as Daedaleopsis confragosa and possibly elsewhere as Lenzites betulina.


However, I'm nearly certain that what we're seeing here, and what is living in my picnic table, is the mushroom from the Genus Gloeophyllum (probably G. trabeum or G. saepiaruim. (note: I am prepared to be wrong again) An important field marking, which I've pretty much overlooked in the past, is the color of the spore-producing surface. Wikipedia names this species "rusty gilled polypore." Arora, in Mushrooms Demystified offers this solace to the confused: "The gills at times join to form mazelike pockets and sometimes there are pores instead of gills (leading to confusion with Daedalea and Daedaleopsis..." also adding that this species was formerly grouped with Lenzites. Arora describes it as "a pest of telephone poles, structural timer in houses and bridges, etc." and one form (trabeum) "is said to be common on the woodwork of automobiles!"

Researchers have determined that at least one species of termite will suppress the growth of this fungus, by, the researchers hypothesize, introducing competing fungi. Presumably the Gloeophyllum destroys the component of the wood which is edible to the termites, while the fungi they introduce do not.

Sorry this is a kind of technical post for a Sunday morning. Let us forget all that, and meditate on this life form which thrives in exactly the conditions which humans provide with the intention of excluding its kind. Rock on, Gloeophyllum!

3:00 snapshot #1321

Zookeepers stopped by my golf cart to say, "Howdy!"

3:00 snapshot #1322 plus bonus pit bulls

With no foster pup in the house it's easier to have Alex and Jim visit. (Jim isn't a fan of the puppies.)


Later in the afternoon we went to a cookout at one of the other PittieLove Rescue foster homes. These are the resident pit bulls, Diesel and Trinny.