Life on the Outer Coast

August 25

My teachers told me to avoid Cortinarius and Russula, for some reason I've choosen not to listen to them. The last couple of days, I've experienced the pain of living in a place with so many of these maddening fungi.

This started benignly enough, in fact I was being nice. Libby Stortz wasn't able to attend the class field trip on Saturday, so the two of us went for a short walk up Gavan Hill trail to look for mushrooms.

These are some of the mushrooms, I found with her and on a trip the next day that I've managed to beat my head against.

Yellow cap, gills and stem. Fading much lighter when dry. The spore print is white/cream. The gill trama is very parallel. No veils present. The gills aren't even vaguely waxy looking to me and the attachment is more adnate than decurrent. No cystidia found. The spores are attached at the end.

There is a distinct odor to the fresh mushrooms. The taste isn't bitter, in fact not much taste at all. Stem hollow with tough catilaginous rind. Seems like it might be Tricholoma sulphureum, but I'm not entirely convinced.

Cortinarius:
This species keys out to C. bicolor in the unfortunately out of date (withdrawn in fact) key to Cortinarius published by the Pacific Northwest Mycological Society. It may be a synonym of C. cageii, but then again may still be a valid taxa.
In the woods it had a brown cap with a white margin. It wasn't viscid. The stem was purple or lilac.

The spore print was appropriately rusty brown, the spores themselves were slightly rough. What was remarkable about this species was how the color changed as it dried (hygrophanous). The cap is almost lilac colored or maybe lilac brown. The light color comes from a kind of "frost" over the surface.

In Arora, this fungus keys out to C. adustus and C. impennis neither described individually, but included in the comments section of C. evernius. This species seems to be one of several medium sized, hygrophanous, purple or lilac tinted species of Cortinarius in the subgenus Telamonia.

Cortinarius: orange brown, kind of looks like a Russula, but has brown spores. The resemblance to a Russula was accentuated by the flaring of the older individuals and the substantial bulk of the mushrooms. The stipe had a bulbous base. The fungus wasn't viscid, nor did the color change on drying. I looked at sections of the gills, the edge was packed with cystidia. Many of which have a narrow, bottle type of tip. Managed to cut one section thin enough to see the origin of the cystidia in the gill trama. The smudges in the background are the spores.

I haven't quite decided what to call this one. Okay, I'm pretty sure it is a Cortinarius, but am almost ready to give up on that idea as well.

I posted this photo on Mushroom Observer and Cortinarius rubicundulus was suggested as a possibility. Looking back in Arora's key, I bypassed this species because it didn't seem to fit the bruising requirements.

Fortunately for my sanity, one of the mushroooms I found was readily identifiable, at least I could more easily convince myself that I was on the right track.

Lactarius kaufmanii var kaufmanii: seems to demonstrate the concept of viscid quite well. The slime was very thick. Once dry the surface of the cap looked varnished.

The last mushrom that has been driving me a bit crazy is this Russula. It seems to be in the group of Russulas that are very hot to the taste, don't want to give up their spores and stain pretty readily. The cuticle didn't peel away from the cap as easily as the typical Russula and the margin was not striate. The mushroom was cream to light tan colored or maybe a light yellow when growing undisturbed in the woods. It wasn't viscid.
I tried to key this creature out in section Compactae because of the staining reaction and the difficulty in peeling the cuticle, but that doesn't seem to be working well either.

Fortunately for me, it is early in the season and I might be lucky enough to find these creatures again and give it another try.

On a happier note; the garden was full of birds this morning. Robins, Varied Thrush, Swainson's Thrush, Ruby crowned kinglet, Townsend's, Orange-crowned and Wilson's warbler, Winter wren, Chestnut backed chickadees, Juncos, Song sparrow and I heard a Nuthatch and a woodpecker of some sort. This evening I saw the first ever Steller's Jay at the bird feeder. I can't say that they haven't been around, but I haven't seen one. This one was eating the seed off the deck rail and from the tube feeder.