Summer Rains Bring Out Incredibly Diverse Mushrooms
Durango Herald, Aug 14, 2005
Leigh Gillette, Program Director

The Bolete mushroom, or Boletus edulis, is found in coniferous habitat. The large mushrooms have reddish brown caps and a white-to-yellow spongy surface on the undersides of their caps

The summer rains have finally started to fall, and it's a great time to investigate mushrooms.

A mushroom is actually a small part of a much larger fungus organism, just as an apple is but a small part of a larger tree. The apple and the mushroom are both reproductive fruiting bodies - the apple carries seeds that will sprout new apple trees, the mushroom carries "spores" that can produce new fungi.

The mushroom sprouts from the main body of its parent fungus - a mat of hair-like fibers called the mycelium. The mycelium absorbs water and nutrients for the fungus. Yet while fungi are similar to plants, with mycelium "roots" and mushroom "fruits" filled with spore "seeds," fungi are also like animals, because they cannot produce their own food.

A fungus must "feed" - usually on dead plant or animal tissues. To do so, the fungus releases digestive enzymes and acids from its mycelium into the surrounding area. Food particles are broken down by these chemicals and then absorbed. Through this chemical digestion, fungi decompose complex materials back into the basic ingredients that plants require for growth, making fungi some of the most important recyclers on Earth.

Fungi are incredibly diverse (with 200,000 species known, and at least 1.5 million species estimated to exist) and use an astounding array of food sources. One saltwater beach fungus is being bred to feed on oil spills, and an oyster mushroom fungus has been proven capable of breaking down petroleum products in contaminated soil.

Colorado's late summer monsoons bring about a fungus fruiting festival. Below are a few charismatic mushrooms of our area (we are not discussing edibility in this article - don't eat any mushroom unless it's been identified by an expert as edible!):

Amanita muscaria : The highly toxic amanita has a bright red mushroom cap decorated with white dots - it's the Alice in Wonderland mushroom! Amanitas range from 2 to 8 inches wide and grow in conifer forests.

Boletus edulis : Often found growing in the same coniferous habitat as amanitas, these are large mushrooms with reddish brown caps and a white-to-yellow spongy surface on the undersides of their caps.

Oyster mushrooms ( Pleurotus species): These pale, fleshy mushrooms grow directly out of aspen or other poplar trees. Their oyster shell-shaped caps are shelved one atop another.

Jelly fungi: Should you find yourself in a spruce forest after a heavy rain, keep your eyes peeled for these tiny golden gelatinous cones or small translucent brown "ears" the size of dimes or quarters.

Puffballs (family Lycoperdaceae ): The round fruiting bodies of these fungi range from marble to basketball size. The spores lie inside the ball, and when mature, release in smoky "puffs."

To learn more about mushroom identification, attend an upcoming mushroom festival. For $295 you can attend the Telluride Mushroom Festival (www.shroomfestival.com), a three-day affair with countless seminars, cook-offs and organized hunting parties. More economical ($40), but still excellent, is the daylong Creede Mushroom Foray (www.creed.com), which includes a hunt, plus a cooking and identification seminar.