A lot of surprises awaited the dozen or so folks who opted to take the nature walk on Big Island during the October 12 picnic. The summer drought had been long and severe, retarding growth and development of everything from plants to insects. Then came the rains and all those repressed species took the opportunity to burst forth in the warm fall weather, especially the mushrooms. What a wonderful array of fungi awaited us as we traveled around the trail!

Mushrooms appeared in every color of the rainbow—green, orange, white, purple, tan, brown. Everywhere we looked, we found something new. Puffballs peppered a decaying log, turkey tails clung to fallen limbs, crowded parchment marched up tree trunks, blewits popped up in the leaf litter and lobster mushroom clawed its way to the surface of the trail.

Fungi (the proper word for mushrooms, toadstools, molds, slimes, etc.) grow just about everywhere. Probably the most familiar ones to most of us are the molds we find on old bread, the green slime that coats many outside-exposed surfaces and the pesky itchy stuff between our toes known as Athlete’s Foot. The forest floor, dead trees, live trees, twigs, leaves, living animals, dead animals, even other fungi provide growing spaces for all kinds of fungi. The cool, moist, forest environment is one of the best places to look for the more spectacular mushrooms. In an future newsletter I’ll tell you more about fungi and explore the fact and fiction of these interesting organisms.          Teta Kain

                                            News