September 9th,
2015. I had walked along this trail and stepped over this solitary mushroom
several times.
This was a
beautiful, solitary specimen but I had been resisting the temptation to get ‘sucked
into’ photographing and identifying fungi. So it was at least three weeks old
by the time I stopped to examine it.
A close view shows
just how beautiful it was. Its cap was approximately 2.5 inches in diameter,
brick-red in the center and fading to a white margin. Its surface was
relatively flat with several tubercles (bumps) in the center. It was growing in
the soil against an exposed, deciduous tree – almost certainly an oak - root.
Its underside was almost flush with the ground and I couldn’t use a mirror to
photograph its underside. I had to remove a portion of the cap to see the
underside.
I wasn’t sure what
to expect and was delighted when I found that it had teeth instead of gills or
pores; this was the first terrestrial toothed mushroom I had ever seen.
The texture of the mushroom
was very tough, like tearing apart layers of plywood. The teeth were
distributed evenly over the underside of the cap and slightly down the stem.
This mushroom resembles
Hydnellum concrescens, commonly called the Zoned Hydnellum or Zoned Tooth
fungus; I'm hoping that this is an accurate identification. The main way this specimen
differed from the description
for this fungus is that its texture was tougher than the ‘leathery becoming
corky’ in most descriptions of this fungus.
A similar species
is Hydnellum scrobiculatum (Ridged
Tooth fungus( that develops a bumpy/ridged cap and is usually found growing
under conifers. I’ve submitted these observations to Mushroom Observer and will
be interested to follow activity on the record. And I’ll be back next year in
the hope of seeing this mushroom again.
References:
- Mushroom Expert, M.
Kuo: (2009, April). Hydnellum
concrescens
- Mushroom Observer,
Joan Knapp: Hydnellum concrescens
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