The Urban Pantheist

Red-backed salamander Plethodon cinereus

It's been almost ten years since I've photographed a red-backed salamander in the city. There are very few amphibians on my lists of urban species (two frog species and now two salamander species at this point). Amphibians have the challenge of a permeable skin, which exposes them to the various pollutants in the urban environment. They are particularly sensitive to acidic substrates, a condition which has been increasing in their eastern forest habitat for more than a century. In the case of the red-backed salamander, their skin is their only mode of respiration: they are lungless salamanders.

Despite this anatomical obstacle, red-backed salamanders are thought to be the most common amphibian species in the northeast North America. Unlike frogs and many other salamanders, they don't require bodies of water to breed; their offspring are born as miniature adults instead of as gilled larvae. They live in leaf litter, feeding on small invertebrates. Females guard their eggs until they hatch, and relatives recognize one another by scent and tolerate each other within a territory. These tiny animals (three inches long is a very large individual) are thought to live to about 10 years old, and possibly as old as thirty.

This individual was taking shelter in the fronds of a hen-of-the-woods mushroom, on a rainy afternoon in the Riverway.

One of a pair of freshly sprouted chicken mushrooms. I cut a hunk off and ate it the next night. The day after that both mushrooms were gone, collected by another mushroomer.


Earlier in the week we found this odd thing. I touched it and it was dense but moist. After looking around the area and puzzling over it, I realized it was a freshly sprouted hen-of-the-woods.

Alexis, Alex and I took the dogs to Forest Hills Cemetery yesterday, to take advantage of the fantastic fall weather.

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Urban species #252: Hen of the woods Grifola frondosa.

At Thanksgiving, 2004, my in-laws treated me to a nice meal at a Cambridge restaurant; I had the chef's vegetarian option: Root vegetables with wild mushroom broth. cottonmanifesto and I had some fun identifying the wild mushrooms in the broth. As it turned out, they were Grifola frondosa. They are often known by their Japanese name, maitake, or their English common name, hen of the woods. This cute descriptor comes from the mushroom's ruffled-feathers appearance; several overlapping caps, rather than a single bracket or stalk. The fungus weakly parasitizes the roots of maples and oaks, reappearing over several years, to the delight of foragers. It can be found throughout temperate America, Europe, and Asia. For whatever reason, members of the Boston Mycological Club are reporting that this mushroom is appearing a full month earlier than usual this year.