The Urban Pantheist

One thing I emphasize in my mushroom classes is that identifying mushrooms to species is really really difficult. I tell them that they should join a mycology club, consult no fewer than 3 field guides, make sure all of the field markings match (including spore color, which may take hours to obtain), and to notice if there are any other species that could be possibly confused with the one they suspect. Still many species can not be identified without using a microscope to look at some features.

Then there's this one, dryad's saddle Polyporus squamosus* that I identified while zipping by on a morning run. This species is one of the few that comes out this early in the year, one of the few with the shaggy "pheasant's back" pattern on the cap (such markings, if they are attached at one side are called "scales" as opposed to warts, which can be easily rubbed or washed off), and distinctively large and fairly fleshy. Polypores are mushrooms that are produced by fungi that feed on dead wood, and are characterized by a spore-producing surface covered with many holes--the openings of tubes lined with cells that make spores. Most polypores are woody or leathery, but a few are fleshy, and some people insist on eating them. They are mostly indigestible chitin, and foragers are advised to take only the freshest softest bits and cook them for a long time. I have not eaten dryad's saddle, but I suppose I will some time, to report the experience if nothing else.



* Many holes, scaly.

Photo by cottonmanifesto. Location: Boxelder tree along Leverett Pond, Boston.
Urban species #239: Dryad's saddle Polyporus squamosus


Photo by urbpan. Location: Ward's Pond, Boston.
Urban species #240: Stinky squid Pseudocolis fusiformus

According to some experts, of the thousands of varieties of fungal fruiting bodies, only about 70 have common names. In the interest of catching up from my vacation, today I present two of them.

Dryad's saddle is a mushroom that appears on dead trees, or on trees that soon will be dead. The fungus invades weak and sickened trees, and feeds on the dead wood inside. The fruiting bodies can be huge, nearly as big as real saddles. If they were made of sturdier stuff, they would be big enough for a person--or wood nymph--to have a place to sit. Their stuff is fairly sturdy, not woody like artist's conk, but rather fleshy and leathery. Earnest foragers will eat the young mushrooms, but their texture repels most others. After producing spores, the mushrooms blacken and rot, eaten mainly by the maggots of fungus gnats. Dryad's saddle is one of the more common wood-digesting fungi that grows mushrooms, and grows on a variety of different tree types.

Like all stinkhorns, stinky squid is a striking mushroom, as unusual to look at as it is unpleasant to smell. Carrion-eating insects are attracted to the foetid odor produced by the slimy gray-green spore mass. The tentacle-like fronds presumably help increase the available surface area to the flies and beetles that spread the spores. Interestingly enough, the first record of this fungus in North America was in Pittsburgh, in 1915. It has spread from there east to Boston and west to Kansas. It lives and feeds in very rich soil, and can be found in landscaping mulch, gardens, and the edges of gardens. Fans of the writing of H.P. Lovecraft should be delighted to encounter this urban species.

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