We usually think of mushrooms as popping up fast and disintegrating rapidly. Many puffballs come up and disperse spores in fall, then persist all winter under the snow. Once revealed in spring, they continue to release spores when stepped on by animals or impacted by rain drops. Wonderful strategy to ensure dispersal of millions of spores in fall, spring, and into the summer.
Continue reading →Welcome to Mushroom Monday for April 16, 2018 Puffballs are a specialized group of mushrooms that produce spheroidal fruitbodies. They belong to a group called Gastromycetes meaning “stomach fungi.” In this group, spores are produced internally in sacs that are generally more-or-less oval. Spores are not forcibly discharged as in the gilled mushrooms, but instead the outer membranes (the peridium) open with pores, or by disintegrating, and the powdery spores are released by wind, or the impact of rain or animals stepping on them. They are called puffballs because clouds … Continue reading →
Welcome to Mushroom Monday for April 9, 2018
Posted by Gary Hunt
Snowbank fungi are species that fruit adjacent to melting show. They are represented by a diverse array of species found in forested regions, primarily higher elevations, of western North America ranging from New Mexico to Canada. They may be saprophytic (decomposers), symbiotic (mycorrhizal) or even pathogenic.
The majority of spring mushrooms in our area are small. It is in fall that we get our display of the larger, more noticeable species. An exception to our diminutive spring species is Calocybe gambosa, known as the lightning mushroom. They are good edibles and have a long history of being collected for food by Interior First Nations bands. The ecology of these mushrooms is interesting. They occur in open grasslands, damp meadows, and in sagebrush ecosystems. You would never find them in closed forests. The reason they form circles (“fairy rings”) … Continue reading →
It’s pretty easy to spot differences between these two plants – one has yellow flowers, one has white flowers. One is squat, the other is tall. But what do these plants have in common? What if I were to tell you that these are the same plant?
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