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Our host and travel guide, Coleman McCleneghan, took me on a few pre-NAMA forays in Virginia, where conditions were much improved. My very first walk ever along the Appalachian Trail, at the foot of Mt. Rogers, Virginia, was delimited by a huge, local species of lepidella: Amanita rhopalopus (rope-uh-low- pus). This monstrous, off-white, deeply rooting amanita was the most abundant fleshy fungus collected; they covered most of a specimen table in great stinking piles.
Better even than fat, stinky lepidellas were the big and beautiful fruitings of Amanita jacksonii, or the American Caesar's mushroom. Coleman and I found a fairy ring of these edible amanitas along the Appalachian Trail. They were cloaked in gorgeous shades of bright orange, in a moist, verdant and delightfully unfamiliar woodland, alive with tulip poplars and green-barked birch, rhodies and oaks.
Drawing the eye away from the spectacular amanitas were colorful boletes, with unfamiliar genera names like Gyroporus, and Pulveroboletus, tucked amongst the many shades of forest green and brown. Patches of Indian Pipe, the ghostly white and transparently delicate, myco-het-erotrophs, obtaining both their carbon and mineral nutrients from ectomycorrhizal fungi, created more pockets of magic on the Southern forest floor.
Farther along the deeply worn and root-crossed Appalachian Trail, I spotted a perfect, shiny-capped, cream-colored, pink-topped Amanita. Its membranous partial veil, bulbous base and sac-like volva proclaimed it a member of section phalloides, but no one had a clue as to its identity. Deadly or not, it was captivatingly beautiful.
But a gal can't live on toxic mushrooms alone. There were plenty of varieties of edible chanterelles brought to the specimen tables: Cantharellus cibarius, C. minor, C. appalachiensis, C. lignicolor, C. lateritius, and the Eastern black chanterelle, Craterellus fallax. The bad news was two-fold... the fairly substantial "cibarius" that I collected near Coleman's cabin was too worm-ridden to eat, and most of the rest of the chanterelles, although handsome and no doubt tasty, were too tiny to matter! Be very, very thankful for our Left Coast fungi!
Other examples of fine and locally popular edi-bles were two similar species of Lactarius: corrugis and volemis. Both bleed copious white latex, but corrugis has a browner cap, and volemus a more orange one. I tried this mushroom two years ago at the Pennsylvania NEMF foray, and it was excellent!
There were a number of standout boletales. Coleman couldn't wait to have me slice into a pale and nondescript Gyroporus cyanescens in the field; the context instantly turned ink blue, and the entire mushroom turned blue-green within a few hours. Buttons of bright yellow Pulveroboletus ravenelii, with their flocculent partial veils, were very distinctive. The brilliantly red-capped Boletus frostii was also a stunner, although age and drying destroyed the deep and lovely reticulations on its stipe.
Although common to our area as well, I was speechless to find myself amidst a fruiting of black earth tongues, Trichoglossum hirsutum, and delighted to find the rarely seen blue-green fruit-bodies of the common Chlorosplenium (Chlorociboria) aeruginascens, whose mycelia also stains its woody substrate a beautiful blue-green. I couldn't believe my eyes when I came across a log covered in the lovely and amusing orange eyelash fungus, Scutellinia scutellata. All of these fun bicoastal fungi traveled back home with us, along with a couple of exclusively Eastern oddities: the carrot-colored Calostoma cinnabarina, a gelatinous stalked puffball, and Xylaria polymorpha, the charmingly named "dead man's fingers.”
Several fine fruitings of the Eastern Jack 'O Lantern mushroom, Omphalotus illudens, were collected, providing glow-in-the-dark room fun for the masses. A cluster of the unfamiliar to me Armillaria tabescens, a small species of honey mushroom, was also brought in, dashboard-dried, and flown back West. The uncommon saprobe/possibly mycorrhizal Limacella illinata var. illinata was collected with some difficulty and brought in to the specimen tables; it's hard to pick a mushroom whose genus name means slime!
Although few of the insect-eating Cordyceps species were collected, we did have a nice showing of parasitic Hypomyces, from the crisp and delicious, pimply, brilliant-orange lobster mush-room, Hypomyces lactifluorum, to the captivatingly colored, electric yellow-green H. luteovirens, both parasitic on Russula species. I was surprised to hear that H. luteovirens actually occurs in northern California. Also spot-ted was the transformer of Amanitas to lumpen phalli of the forests, H. hyalinus.
I was thrilled to see many exclu-sively Eastern species of Amanitas. Section lepidella was well represented by A. rhopalopus, daucipes, longipes, cokeri and the charming black and white onusta. Many grisettes and several other members of section vaginatae were also collected: fulva, ceciliae, jacksonii, banningiana, and the unnamed grisette pseudoprotecta. Section amanita was represented by A. pantherina var. multisquammosa, A. farinosa and A. frostiana. Section validae sported the common A. brunnescens in brown and white forms, a few A. rubescens (not the same "blusher" as our novinupta in the West), A. volvata elongata, A. pseudovolvata and the colorful A. flavoconia. The deadly Amanita bisporigera was the dominant member of section phalloidae. Phew! That's quite a list, but only a fraction of what could've been found. Luckily for me, amanitas still fruit in dry conditions.
Debbie Viess
