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Australian Rainforest Chanterelles? (Update: definitely not Chanterelles!)


navieko

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Hi -- guessing most members here are based in the US but hoping you can help with at least confirming whether or not this is a Chanterelles? Only recently gained a interest in foraging for wild edible mushrooms here in Far North QLD, Australia -- in the wet tropics. Was actually looking for a species of Chanterelles that has been observed in my area in the past (on iNaturalist and also Atlas of Living).... however stumbled across this magnificent beast growing on a rotten log in the rainforests, which is very different from the Chanterelles I was looking for but still looks like it could be in the Cantharellus genus perhaps?

Here's the link to the observation I logged on iNaturalist, pictures can be seen on there.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/37935089

Let me know if any questions... also I collected the specimens and have them currently stored in my fridge so if needed I can take better pictures.

Cheers,

navieko

 

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This doesn't look like a Chanterelle.  It doesn't have the usual ribbing or false gills, although some Australian Chanterelles are smooth on the bottom of the cap.  It's also growing on wood, which is not normal for Chanterelles, which are mycorrhizal.  To me it looks like a polypore, but I don't have any idea what genus.

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Yeah you're right, looking at pics of Chanterelles and quite different, not to mention this was growing out of a decaying tree. I don't think it's a polypore though, I'm a bit more familiar with the polypores we get around here and this is quite different. Almost more like something from the Pleurotus genus perhaps?

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Almost certainly not a Chanterelle (species of neither Cantharellus nor Craterellus). 

I don't think this is Pleurotus either. Pleurotus should have an underside that is clearly composed of gills. The underside here looks to be longitudinally streaked with shallow depressions/ridges that are not gills. However, if there are actual gills on the underside, you may want to consider Lentinus sajor-caju, a species reported from Queensland    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentinus_sajor-caju     https://mushroomobserver.org/observer/index_observation?q=164f4 .

I'm wondering... if you use a magnifying glass to examine the surface on the underside will you perhaps see some very small pores? On the other hand, some species from the polypore genus Picipes have pores that can be too small to be seen with a magnifying glass, or young ones that are difficult to see because they are "stuffed". Picipes fruit bodies have flesh that is tough/leathery, although young specimens can be fairly soft/flexible. The mushroom seen here reminds me somewhat of Picipes melanopus, a species uncommonly found where I live (Pennsylvania USA). 

There are numerous types of polypores that occur in tropical/subtropical areas that do not occur in temperate regions. 

 

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I think the Lentinus sajor-caju is the best consideration so far. Many of the pics I browsed look almost identical, at least to the smaller specimen, and I checked iNaturalist for occurrences nearby and there are indeed multiple observations (identification agreed upon by a couple others to be Lentinus sajor-caju), this one being the closest to where I found my specimens: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/37203331

The specimens I have definitely have identical looking ridges/gills as in the pictures from the links you've shared... for some reason they're just not very visible in the pic I took of the underside.

Apparently they are edible, but without absolute 100% confirmation I'd still be hesitant to put that to the test just yet... but at least I think we're very close to narrowing it down.

The one thing still potentially throwing me off is the very large specimen which has fruiting bodies clustered/layered upon each other... I haven't yet seen a pic of the Lentinus sajor-caju like that... they all seem to be separate/distinct bodies with fairly uniformly round edges (by comparison). I still think with the layered specimen it looks closer to P. pulmonarius but they don't typically seem to have as pronounced a stem as my ones seem to... mine is like a weird cross between  P. pulmonarius and L. sajor-caju! Which funnily enough, I believe used to be identified as the same species until 1975.

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Sometimes the same species name gets regionally applied to different looking types of fungi. It is often the case that DNA data eventually shows there's a need for different names. The reason I include this comment is because the mushrooms under consideration here really do not look like the Pleurotus pulminarius I find in eastern NA (see photo below). But, I have seen plenty of Mushroom Observer posts showing mushrooms collected in western NA that the collector calls Pleurotus pulmonarius that look quite a bit different than the ones I find.

Navieko, do your mushrooms have true gills that are separated from one another? As opposed to just shallow grooves? If so, then how deep are they?

The follwing photo shows Pleurotus pulmonarius typical of what I find here in eastern NA; a fairly common summer species that generally produces white fruit bodies . These were found in Vermont.                                Pleurotus_pulmonarius_MtElmr_8-3.thumb.JPG.aecf68d8b4989e7c24f0c0bf42c7f84b.JPG

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Hi Dave -- here's a pic of the underside of some sections I cut from the larger specimen... might give you a better idea. To me it looks like they're all separated from each other and run in a straight line from 1 end to the other... as for depth, maybe 1mm? They're pretty thin and don't have a lot of flesh to them.

IMG_20200129_183540.jpg

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Okay, true gills, tightly-spaced. This was difficult to discern from the original photos. I'd say Lentinus sajor-caju is a really good candidate for the ID. I don't know this species. But, in general, gilled Lentinus mushrooms have gills with crenulate (finely toothed) to serrate edges. (Some species of Lentinus have hymenium composed of pores.)

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