A lot of people are frustrated by Colorado’s weeks-long spate of rainy, cold weather, but Denver Botanic Gardens mycologist
is not one of them.
All that water practically guarantees , Amanitas, boletes, polypores, hypogeous fungi, jelly fungi — and maybe some entirely new genus, like discovered in 2009 on near Fort Collins.
This news will delight the foragers already looking for not to mention the potential late-summer bonanza of , sold (for ) as , and the star attraction at ‘s .
Come for the porcini and (delicious sauteed in garlic and butter); stay for (but don’t eat!) the gorgeous
“Do you think if mushrooms weren’t , we’d get 1,000 people at ?” asked Evenson, a petite woman with silver hair. (This year’s Denver Botanic Gardens mushroom fair is Sept. 6).
The expanded, updated version of her book, (Timber Press) has just been published.
“People might get interested in mushrooms because, yeah, they can eat porcini, but they’ll get hooked when they start finding the beautiful mushrooms in their yard or in the high country,” Evenson said.
Mushroom habitat, not edibility, is what interests her and the people she calls ” ,” amateurs who share Evenson’s keen interest in fungi.
In fact, it was a couple of citizen mycologists who discovered the previously unknown mushroom lurking at Soapstone.
“Oh, it created a big stir internationally,” Evenson said.
“Its whole name is Cercopemyces crocodilinus. It looks like crocodile scales on top. When they found it, they brought it here and I’d never seen it before.
“I have a friend in Utah, , and sent him a photo. He said he’d found one — just one — and that was two of these mushrooms found in a steppe habitat. Then I sent it to Tim Baroni, a geneticist in New York. He spent about a year and a half figuring out what it was, and when he finished, he named it a new genus. Very unusual, and very rare.
“And because of citizen mycologists, we’re going to find more.”
A lot more, unless June is as dry as May was wet, Evenson says.
Stalking wild fungi
Right now, snow still covers the terrain where mushrooms fruit in the high country, but Evenson already is planning collection trips. She loves to hike,
She might see the white-flecked red mushroom , or a luminous yellow She might find a tangle of , the tiny slender-stalked mushrooms found on conifer needles.
It all depends on the habitat, which is as critical for mushrooms as it is for birds, animals, trees and other forms of life.
“There are so many kinds of mushrooms, just as diverse as animals,” she said.
“We know a lot about urban mushrooms, because the spores come in on car tires, on the soles of people’s shoes or feet, on backpacks, in mulch. I’m not an expert on city mushrooms. I’m more interested in those little mushrooms in the woods, the fungi that live on dead grass, leaves and pine cones. If you see a pine cone that’s fallen apart, that’s fungi at work. They use the cellulose as a food source, and break it down into soil.”
Being interested in mushrooms requires being interested in habitat. That’s true also for the people whose interest is limited to edible mushrooms. That bulbous mushroom growing in an aspen stand might look like boletus edulis, but that speciesreliably co-exists with high-altitude spruce conifers — not aspen or oak. So identification is tricky.
” , and they evolved alongside plants,” Evenson said.
“There’s a big group of fungi — rotters, digesters — that live with tree roots. Even those little willows you see at treeline live with fungi, and the fungi spread way beyond the roots of the tree. The fungi bring the tree nutrients, and the fungi get sugar from the tree. They live very happily together.”
On page 184 of “Mushrooms of the Rocky Mountain Region,” there’s a wonderful photograph of Parasola plicatilis, commonly known as the Japanese umbrella, a fragile, tiny mushroom that looks like an origami expert folded its pleated cap. That picture was taken just a short distance from Evenson’s underground laboratory at the Denver Botanic Gardens. It lives on the debris inside broken wood.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” she asked. “If you look in the right places, you’ll find them, I think. We don’t know for sure. This is Colorado; it could all dry up in a week. But all this moisture? It’s a very good sign for mushrooms.”
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com or twitter.com/byclairemartin
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