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There is a certain mystique that surrounds mushrooms. Existing in the form of over 45,000 different species, these fungal fruiting bodies can be strikingly diverse in form. The delicate mycelium, roughly analogous to a plant's roots, can pervade vast expanses. Even so, predicting where and when the mysterious sprouting bodies will appear seems quite impossible. A combination of conditions, including temperature, humidity, sunlight, and soil, must be just right for a mushroom to sprout and thrive. To explore the mushroom's mystery, I took an expedition into my backyard. This was the most convenient locale to do so, as I could visit it often for continuous observation. In addition, my yard teems with biological activity due to the large amount of decaying wood, including stumps and logs, from several large cottonwood trees (Populus deltoides, members of the willow family) that were cut down several years ago. Most of my yard is grassy, shaded, and slightly uneven in elevation. Numerous trees and shrubs line the edges of this plot of land, creating moist and darkened areas. Despite this advantageous environment for mushrooms, I did not expect to find much; before this expedition, I had not seen even one mushroom in the yard. |
On October 1, 2002, the first day of the expedition, one of the first mushrooms I discovered was a cluster of "LBMs," or little brown mushrooms (Aurora p. 32), which remain unidentified; new species sprouted at a rate faster than I could check them out. It seemed completely pointless, and often impossible, for me to try to identify them one by one since they were so abundant, yet each had its own minute differences. Still, I guessed that these mushrooms were in the Psathyrella genus, since they seemed to match the descriptions of the common features of Psathyrella, including the distinctly delicate flesh and the tendency to grow in large groups. Upon lifting the low branches of some creeping evergreen juniper shrubs (Juniperus horizontalis), I discovered a thick carpet of tiny caps. The myriad little mushrooms completely obscured the soil beneath them. The stalk, roughly 5.8 centimeters tall, was almost translucent in color. The conical cap, about one centimeter in diameter, was dry, fibrillose, and varied from a gray to a light gray-brown color. The adnate, broadly attached gills were a darker shade of brown. |
        
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