The Urban Pantheist

I was unable to identify this pretty red mushroom, but it's probably a Russula.

Russula* mushrooms are easy to identify to genus. They are usually all white, except for a colored skin on the cap that can be peeled off without otherwise damaging the mushroom. The flesh is white and brittle throughout--you can snap the stem or the cap and it breaks clean with an audible snap. They produce light colored spores (usually white) and the brittle white gills touch the stem. There is never a ring on the stem or a volva at the base; they are always mycorrhizal, sometimes with oak and other hardwoods, sometimes with pine forests.

Identifying them to species, unfortunately, is not so easy. Take this red-capped Russula. There are at least 70 species of Russula with red or pink colored caps in our area. Discerning them requires careful attention such details as the specific habitat, the mushroom's taste (always spit it out!), and then several microscopic features. It's a bit academic, as most Russulas are not sought out for any particular reason--they aren't considered great edibles, and at least some can make you pretty sick. Best to just appreciate their beauty, and the fact that they imply that the forest beneath your feet is a healthy web of roots and mycelium.

Also some people like to kick them, because they shatter into a million pieces.


And also this one was unusually small.

* "Reddish"

These mushrooms have been coming up year after year by my office, which happens to be beneath some grand red oaks. These are Russula mushrooms, which are the reproductive part of a fungus that lives in concert with the roots of the oaks. The species is the viresens/crustosa complex, a group of closely related edible mushrooms I call "crackle top."


Other batches found in this spot have been greener or grayer, but this is the first time I've seen them with the orange sunrise in the middle. Another mushroom guy (on facebook) said 'it has a striate margin and brown center so I would call it "probably Russula parvovirescens" but here's a key: http://www2.muse.it/russulales-news/id_virescentinae.asp '


Other symbiotic fungi growing amongst the same roots include these Amanitas which I'm tentatively calling A. flavoconia.

Good lord there are so many mushrooms out there that it is impossible to keep up. This post is just those that have appeared at Franklin Park Zoo in the past week. Above is a group of hemlock reishi Ganoderma tsugae

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Visiting the bees.
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Five years ago today, I arrived in Honolulu apparently. Oh the next few of these will make me sad.

Alexis and I on either side of an Amanita mushroom in Cutler Park.

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I saw this one pick a Russula, and run over to the tree to eat it.

If you haven't seen the question yet, go to the previous post first.

Photos by cottonmanifesto. Location: Under 150 year old red oaks in the Riverway, Boston and Brookline.

Urban species #205: The Sickener Russula emetica

This mushroom belongs to a group of colorful fruiting bodies of mycorrhizal fungi collectively known as Russulas. These mushrooms are easy to identify to the genus level, but very difficult to identify to species. The genus is characterized by white, chalky flesh in the stalk and gills. Their caps are usually colorful, some species purple, some green, many reddish. One of the red species is well enough known to have a common name: the sickener. Russulas are controversial among wild mushroom-eaters--some consider all of them to be poisonous, some consider all of them edible, except one. The sickener causes the eater to vomit--a merciful fate considering the alternatives some other mushrooms offer. The sickener is known to occur in Europe, but it may or may not be one of the red-capped Russulas in North America. Further molecular studies will tell us which species are unique to each continent, and which may occur worldwide.

Russulas are common mushrooms in New England woods. Because they are mycorrhizal, they occur only in areas where trees (usually oaks) have had their roots in the soil for many years. Urban trees are short-lived creatures, scraping out a living in polluted, compacted, acid soils, and mycorrhizal mushrooms are rare in cities. However, great city parks, with acres of wilderness area, can support surprising amounts of biodiversity. Russulas are favored food items of gray squirrels, and slugs--presumably these animals don't suffer the same effects that humans do when eating the sickener.