Making a Path

Fluted Bird's Nest (Nidula candida)

        Today is my first day trying to find mushrooms. I  had wanted to do the blog/paper on the local berries but there will not be any berries until the semester is over so I chose mushrooms for my topic. I only hope there are mushrooms that are out this early in the year though it is still might be a little too cold.
        I decided I am going to look in my backyard. The bushes that block my path into the forest snap as I push through. The path is muddy. There are fallen trees and branches that serve as home for a variety of mosses. The feather moss or step moss is my personal favorite. I hope I can find a colorful fungus that is as bright as the green of the forest floor. The sky is not too visible through the tree canopy though the bleak grey sky still offers a glimmer of hope for my quest. Not more than five feet in front of me, I find my first fungi a bird’s nest fungus. I remember this in my Natural History of Alaska class with Barbara Morgan. The spores sit within the cup and when rain falls into the cup, the disc-shaped spores spill onto the forest floor. This was one of my favorite fungus that I learned about in the class with Professor Morgan.

Cantharellus ignicolor?

Cantharellus ignicolor?

        With my spirits high from the first find, I decide to trek on. Which way do I go? I decide to climb up and off to the right. It is the path that offers the route of least resistance. As I step around a young hemlock, I find another batch of mushrooms. There are some pale cream-colored mushrooms in a moss bed resting between hemlock roots. The mushrooms have irregular gills and look a little old. I wonder if these are a species of chanterelle mushrooms that Leo searches for. I need to find out how to do spore printing so I can verify the mushrooms I find. There is a younger looking specimen but I don’t want to start taking samples yet. This is great I have already found two different mushrooms and I have only just begun my journey. The day keeps getting better.     The clouds are beginning to disperse and blue of the sky is illuminating the forest floor. The roots of the trees look like octopus tentacles, tangled into knots permanently locked. I see a dead tree and its crumbling glory is littered with bear bread. There is one that is about the size of my hand. There is over a dozen bear bread in total but the largest is within my grasp. I don’t want to grab any mushrooms until I learned about spore printing but I will make this one exception. The bear bread I’ll dry then paint it. They are also known as the artist conk.