The Urban Pantheist

On xmas day, since I had the day off, I puttered around the house. Messed about on the internet for hours, and played with dogs. Also I walked around the yard looking for mushrooms. Sounds crazy, looking for mushrooms in late December, but it's been rainy and fairly warm lately, so it could happen.

Back in the brush pile there's a sapling Norway maple (about 3 inches diameter) trunk laying there. This beautiful fresh bloom of coral spots caught my eye.

As I backed out of the pile I saw what looked like mushroom caps--could it be?


Holy crap! I didn't think to take a sample for a spore print. Feels a little like a honey mushroom but a little wrong. Could be growing out of anything--it's coming from a huge pile of dead wood, but there are live tree roots under there too.


I'm just happy that they are there. If they're still there this weekend I might put some more effort into identifying them.

Coral spot Nectria cinnabarina

About a year ago I cut down a dozen or so Norway maple saplings and arranged the cut wood along a retaining wall by size. The stumps of the saplings act as brackets keeping the piles of cut wood in piles not spilling into the yard. Recently I've noticed the cut logs are breaking out in fungal skin conditions. A few have this beautiful coral spot acne, some have a dry rash of gray-lilac crust, and a couple manifested a growth of Porodisculus pendulus; there is also the unknown fungus in this other post.

Coral spot is one of those creatures I never noticed until I started making a habit of noticing everything. I first saw it in Forest Hills Cemetery I believe, and was stunned by it's beauty and mystery.

The spots produce two generations of spores, first asexual spores called conidia, then sexual spores called perithecia erupt from the same structures. Especially unlovely photographs of these stages are available here.


Also I found some bird's nest fungi growing on an old rotten board in the back of the yard. I thought for sure it was new for the project but nope I covered the same species in 2011.

My new favorite park (because it is close, fully fenced, uncrowded, and woody) Dane Park in Brookline near the Newton line, was were I took Charlie yet again this weekend.
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