Pholiota
Fungal Boogie is a new CD by Zoe Wood and Larry Evans features 13 songs about fungi, edible and otherwise, in a range of musical styles that includes blues, calypso, polka, and rockabilly. Click here to hear a sample of the CD on this mushroom.
This large group of wood decomposing fungi are notable for their slimy caps, dark brown spores, and wide distribution. A few are eaten, even fewer by humans. Look for a scaly stem, prominent annulus, and attached gills.
As in many other ecosystems, there is a regular sucession of plants and fungi that follow after a fire in the northern boreal forest. These Pholiota highlandensis are often found on charcoal or moss beds 2 or 3 years after a forest fire. Nothing eats them but the bugs.
This shows a young Pholiota squarrasoides emerging from the base of a burned tree in interior Alaska.
An unidentified species of Pholiota, and some fire following fairy cups, Geopyxis species.
This is a Pholiota. Note the viscid scaly cap, attached gills, and dark spore print (on cap of smaller mushroom at right).
There are a few hundred species of these pesky Pholiotas, and it can be tough to name them without a look thru the microscope, where Smith and Hessler distinguish dozens of species by comparing the shapes of cheilocystidia, (chai-low-sis-tiddya), large sterile cells found on the gills.
Pholiota carbonicola
Pholiota mutabilis
Pholiota sp
Pholiota squarrosa
Pholiota vernalis
