This mushroom story still makes me smile even years later. While at CornellUniversity, I lived with two other graduate students
in an apartment downhill from campus. Each day on our walk home we passed a fraternity that I barely noticed. My roommate Cathy, however, spotted shaggy mane mushrooms on the broad lawn and during the fall she picked a crop daily, turning them into mushroom delicacies in our kitchen. One afternoon a fraternity brother sauntered out while she was harvesting and asked a simple question. With a sweep of his hand across the lawn he queried, “Are all these mushrooms edible?” Cathy replied slowly, “Some of them are,” thus securing our mushroom supply for the remainder of our stay in Ithaca! Shaggy mane mushrooms resemble the widespread perception of a typical mushroom - one with a cap and stem. In reality, mushrooms are
fungi that grow in a variety of shapes including round, club-shaped or bracket-like to those resembling coral or even tiny cups containing what looks like eggs. These are all the fruitbodies of fungi, literally the tip of the iceberg. Beneath is a labyrinth of threads or hyphae which absorbs nutrients. It can extend for miles! If you turn over a rotting log, you will get a glimpse of
this expanding network in action. With the correct moisture and environment, hyphae generate into the familiar mushroom fruitbodies whose function it is to form spores that disperse on the wind. Spores germinate into new hyphae and renew
the cycle. Let’s take a closer look at three mushrooms you are likely to encounter. See if you can recognize them from the descriptions.On many walks in the woods, I am intrigued by the brilliant yellow to orange color of a classic-looking cap and stem mushroom. Its cap flattens as it ages and is covered with light-colored flakes. A large ring, which originally covered
the gills, now encircles the stem below the cap. Immediately I am reminded of the stories of toadstools – a term sometimes referring to poisonous mushrooms. Any guesses? If Amanita muscaria (Fly Agaric) jumps to your mind, you are right and yes, it is fine-looking but deadly for humans to eat. On a morning after wet summer or autumn weather, these mushrooms seem to have inflated into giant white balls on a lawn. If they are still young, the inside whensliced is white and solid. When you come back a few days later, the outside is deteriorating and the inside is yellowing as the spores mature. A smaller relative, the
size of a golf ball, has a pore in the top from which thespores emerge like smoke when disturbedDid you solve the mystery? These arepuffballs – round mushrooms with no stems– the Giant Puffball (Calvatia gigantea) and the Tumbling Puffball (Bovista plumbea). Exploring by an abandoned beaver pond, you see that remnants of chewed stumps are now festooned with layers of small fan-shaped bracket fungi that havesemi-circular patterns of light and dark brown. Do they remind you of part of a
turkey’s anatomy? Yes, these are turkey-tail polypores (Trametes versicolor)! Turkey tails grow on stumps that are at least three years old. If the conditions are right for mushrooms, you can find a multitude of different shapes, sizes and even smells! Mushroom odors range from pleasant fragrances like cinnamon, almond, or apricot to downright nasty ones akin to decaying carrion, rotten cabbage, or bad ham. Another intriguing aspect of mushrooms is the diverse way spores are arranged – they are produced by a structure called a hymenium, which may be located along gills or in pores on the underside of the cap. The hymenium may also be on the surface of the fungi – coral-like fungi for example – or in the case of the cups with egg-like structures, the hymenium is enclosed within “eggs” that splash out when hit by rain water. A fun project with children (and also an important identification technique) is to collect some spore prints from cap and stem mushrooms. Using just the cap of a fresh mushroom, place the gill or pore surface down on paper. Cover it with a bowl andovernight the spores will be deposited on the paper making an intriguing spore print! Spores can come in several colors from white to brown to black so you may need to experiment with light and dark paper. It is tempting, as we walk through the forest, across a field, or even in our backyard, to focus solely on the visible part of mushrooms. Take time to contemplate the teaming mushroom network beneath our
With summer here, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center has started its Up Close to Animals Series! Come see as our naturalists give mini presentations on the animals here at the Science Center, including the peregrine falcon, porcupine, skunk, great horned, northern saw-whet, and barred owls, opossum, snakes, woodchuck, hawks, turtles, and bats! At today's presentation, Beth showed us all about the barred owl, explaining its different senses and how it hunts and eats its prey. We then got to hear its different calls and see how its feathers and talons are constructed. It was very interesting!
Presentations are held daily at the amphitheater (in Classroom 3 in the Webster Building if raining) from 11 - 3 on the hour and last about 20 minutes. The Up Close to Animals talks are free as part of your trail admission. Click here to view the daily schedule.
Squam Lakes Natural Science Center wants your old cell phones! Why? To recycle! We have been working with Eco-Cell to collect old cell phones and recycle them in an environmentally friendly way. So if you have any old or broken cell phones that you would like to get rid of, bring them in to Squam Lakes Natural Science Center and we'll take care of it for you! For more information on Eco-Cell, visit their website at www.eco-cell.com.
A tour of Squam Lake on the Science Center's Lake Cruise revealed many exciting sights! Summer is in full swing here on the lake, and it couldn't be more beauitful! As we left Cotton Cove, we came into full view of the Sandwich Mountains. Along the way, we spotted several loon nests with our binoculars, the loons not far away! Finally, we caught a glimpse of the house occupied by Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda in the film On Golden Pond. It was a great afternoon.
On May 16 Squam Lakes Natural Science Center hosted a special day to teach about the fascinating and resourceful native New Hampshire Black Bear. All ages were admitted to the trails for a special reduced fee of $8 (admission, as always, was free for members and children ages 2 and under). New Hampshire Fish & Game Biologist Andrew Timmons presented a talk about Black Bear ecology at 10:30 a.m. Visitors viewed the Science Center’s two resident Black Bears and volunteer docents were on hand to answer Bear trivia questions. There were crafts and story time for children.
New Hampshire Day on May 2 was generously sponsored by the New Hampshire Electric Co-op Foundation. The weather cooperated and 1,229 people from across the state got “Nearer to Nature.”
Squam Lakes Natural Science Center has a series of special days planned this year, which include discounts on Mother’s and Father’s Day (moms or dads admitted for free with a matching paid admission), Black Bear Day on May 16 – a special day to learn about New Hampshire’s bruins with reduced admission fees, Get Outdoors Day on June 13 (when youth will be admitted for free with a paid adult admission) and Coyote Day on June 20. Many libraries across the state purchase memberships for use by their patrons, which also provide admission discounts.
This is the official blog of Squam Lakes Natural Science Center (SLNSC).The mission of SLNSC is to advance understanding of ecology by exploring New Hampshire’s natural world.
