Life on the Outer Coast

Woke up to the wind this morning, actually fell asleep to its sound as well. This was in contrast to Friday night when I fell asleep listening to whales surfacing in Eastern channel. Not sure how close they need to be to the island to be audible without an open window. Sound does carry rather well from the water up the cliff, I can hear kayakers chatting and sea birds calling clearly in the garden. Lullabys from humpbacks is a less common experience. I'm using lullabys loosely as the sound isn't exactly one that lulls me to sleep, its a bit too abrupt for lulling. Sadly, I've never heard geese overhead when I'm falling asleep in this house. Probably won't get much sympathy for only hearing humpbacks.

Saturady saw a male longtail on my trip to town, 2 common mergansers in the cove and the usual flock of goldeneyes by the Wade's dock.
Walked to dance class, admired the large number of Harlequins on Sage rock, but had to hurry through the park instead of looking for birds. I did find time to stop on Alice island on my way to UAS after dance class. Sat out on a sunny rock and ate my lunch, it was pretty quiet except for a lapland longspur and a mink. The longspur was there when I approached the rock, fortunately I didn't scare it off immediately. Last year it was November 11th that I saw the longspur that Jen reported seeing on Alice island.
The mink walked up to me while I sat there eating my apple. I'm starting to wonder if I smell like a dead fish or some intertidal creature given the number of mink that have visited me this fall. No one has complained so far, maybe they are all too polite?
Did get ample spores from the two Amanitas, not much from the other mushrooms, so I just started plates from the two A. muscaria. I'm hoping to transfer a few germinating spores on Monday. More crossed fingers.

I keep beating my head against the classification of those two subspecies of A. muscaria. I think I'll just accept the PNW key decision to call the yellow form var. formosa with the knowledge that it isn't correct. I can hope that my culture of it is successful and I can send it and a dried specimen or two to someone who wants to beat their head against that issue. If both cultures make it, I can always do the mating study here.
Unfortunately I can't immediately get the issues of Mycotaxon with articles about nomemclatural changes in Amanita. I did find out that back issues of that journal are slowly being made available on the web, but alas not the ones I need. I was tempted to order the t-shirt with the logo of a dinner plate with an Amanita with the caption "bad taxonomy can kill". Nice summary of one motivation for continuing with the sometimes frustrating project of coming up with a accurate list of fungi for the Sitka area. I did briefly look at Tuloss' key to Amanita of the PNW linked on the mushroom expert (major headache).
Just to add to the fun, started looking into the Hericium situation. Two of the sources I use most frequently for keys & descriptions differ in their treatment of this genus. The key in PNW key council seems like a better key http://www.svims.ca/council/Toothe.htm#nHer than the one available on the mushroom expert site (no offense, I really appreciate all the work he has done).
In the PNW key (and descriptions) a major seperation is based on whether the fruiting body is branched or not, the next step is based on the comb-like or clustered arrangement of the spines, then the last break is based on host. The only species I've found locally is H. abietis, it is branched with clusters of short spines and grows on conifers. I've mostly found it on cut logs in campgrounds, probably because I visit Starrigavan alot in the fall. In the PNW key the hardwood host choice with a fungus of similar features will lead one to H. americanum.
Now for the confusion. If a person uses the mushroom expert site (which has a great 2nd paragraph on this genus), the first choice is again one of branching or not. The second choice for an unbranched fungus is obviously a work in progress (again I kowtow to this site regularly). Typically ours are branched, so our next choice is host and geography. If the fungus is on a conifer in the PNW with short spines, the choice is H. abietis. If not as above, the slightly different length of the spines and geography determines the choice. The comb-like or clustered structure of H. coralloides and H. americanum isn't noted and I'm assuming not considered consistant. I'm guessing that it isn't considered a consistant character based on the photos included of H. coralloides, only one of which shows the comb structure.
In an attempt to figure out why these two sources disagreed, I looked through the works cited. I thought I had it figured out when Ginn wasn't cited on the PNW site. No such luck, since the paragraph preceding the PNW key states that the key is based on Ginn's treatment of the genus. Unfortunately once again I can't immediately get my hands on the original reference. The one Ginn paper I could access discussed the restriction of H. abietis to western North America, but didn't mention any geographic restriction of H. americanum in the paper (although it did speak to host specificity). I guess I'm happy that I haven't found a Hericium on a deciduous tree near Sitka yet. I'll have to look harder for such a beast (I seem to gravitate to puzzles) and turn in a few interlibrary loan requests.

Still blowing intensely out here. I haven't had to take the bird feeder down yet, so it isn't too bad.