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First fungus of the spring in the NE


Guest Vlad

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About a week ago I found a black jelly fungus that was partly dried out, on an oak sapling. My guess was that it was Witch’s Butter that went through a color change due to the frost at night and drying. Yesterday I found another oak sapling which had quite a few of these growing on it and they were fresh. It yielded a dull yellow spore print. Doing a search on the Internet I have come to the conclusion that it is Brown Witch’s Butter or Amber Jelly Roll aka Exidia recisa. The size and shape of the spores supports this ID. Mushrooms of Northeastern North America gives May – October as the season for this fungus, so this one jumped the gun. Now if I can only find a Scarlet Cup on this property, next door, it will save me a 200 mile trip to the Berkshires :)

http://www.mushroomhunter.net/032211.htm

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And there's nothing wrong with going to the Berkshires... many people go with no excuse whatsoever! :)

But to go just to see one scarlet cup....that reminded me vividly of a fascinating book I read last year about birders, " The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession".

I wonder whether anyone in North America has ever tried doing a Fungal BIg Year?

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Yes, or at least the normal progression where I live is the devils urn fruits a week or so before morels. Remember though that the difference between the north side of s slope and the south side can be easily a week so if you found the urn in a cold spot there might be morels on a warm south facing slope. I find that the verpas are a better indicator with the morels beginning as the verpa bohemica wind down.

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In my area, I have found only one Verpa in all my springtime mushroom hunting (more in other areas). But I find the Urns (Urnula craterium) about 1 to 2 weeks before the black morels. Yellow morels arrive about 14-20 days after the first blacks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Found this yesterday, 4/9. That's really early for a gilled mushroom; maybe the earliest I've seen (not counting winter mushrooms like Flammulina and Galerina). Found these Coprinellus cinereus (formerly Coprinus) growing directly on some horse dung that we had spread on a rhubarb patch.

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I had a report from Bill Neill. He went to the Berkshires yesterday and found scarlet cups. When he got home to Boston he found Mica Caps in his yard. Like he said “here we go again”.

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