Mushrooms fill a variety of vital roles

Last weekend’s badly needed rain helped trigger the emergence of a variety of fall mushrooms — a good thing for those of us who had gathered at the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center in Jasper County to search for the interesting fungi.

“The rains have come just in time,” said our leader, Debra Davis, an Athens master naturalist and nature photographer. Mushrooms, she noted, can literally pop up overnight — and all over the place — after a good rain.

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CHARLES SEABROOK/Special

Debra Davis points out a fly agaric mushroom to Jacob Daniell, 7, of Monroe at the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center.

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Usually, most of us would pay little heed to mushrooms, despite their seemingly ubiquitous presence. But Davis has an intense passion for the fungi. She has been photographing Georgia’s mushrooms and talking about them for years. After listening to her talk about mushrooms and show her amazing photos, we couldn’t wait to get outside and start looking for the fungi.

Mushrooms, Davis told us before our walk, are as “incredibly beautiful” and diverse (the Southeast has thousands of species) as the wildflowers that bloom in spring and fall. Unlike green plants, though, mushrooms are fungi; they don’t contain chlorophyll and, therefore, can’t make their own food.

In nature’s grand scheme, mushrooms are “critically important,” Davis noted. For one thing, many of them are saprophytes, which break down dead plants and other nonliving organic matter and consume the nutrients. Without mushrooms, decomposition of dead trees and other plants would take place much more slowly and “the forest would suffocate,” Davis said.

On the other hand, most living trees could not survive without the so-called mycorrhizal mushrooms. The trees and mushrooms establish mutually beneficial relationships, exchanging essential nutrients and minerals with each other.

Actually, the structures that we call mushrooms are aboveground reproductive bodies whose purpose is to produce millions of ultra-tiny spores to make more mushrooms. Below ground, and out of sight, is the growing part of the mushroom, the mycelium, made up of threadlike filaments.

Before we headed outside for our walk, Davis issued a strict warning: Some mushrooms are deadly, so unless you’re adept in identifying them, avoid collecting mushrooms for eating.

The walk

To find our first mushroom of the day, we didn’t have to go far from the Charlie Elliott visitors center, where Davis gave her briefing. In the grass just outside the front door were scores of common puffballs known by their scientific name, Lycoperdon molle — the only puffball species found during our hourlong walk.

Some of the 14 other species that we saw:

Citron amanita (Amanita citrina), the most common mushroom of the day. The Amanita group contains some of the world’s most toxic mushrooms, though at the same time they form critical mycorrhizal relationships with numerous trees.

Pine spike (Croogomphus ochraceus), a distinctive mushroom that occurs under pine trees and other conifers.

Turkey tail (Trametes versicolor), a common bracket mushroom that grows on dead logs and decomposes the wood. You’ve no doubt seen this mushroom while walking in the woods.

Violet-tooth polypore (Trichaptum biforme), another bracket species that occurs in overlapping clusters on dead hardwoods.

In the sky

The moon will be new on Thursday. Look for the thin crescent low in the west after sunset Friday, says David Dundee, an astronomer with the Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Venus shines brightly in the west just after sunset and sets in the west two hours later. Jupiter is high in the southwest just after dark and sets in the west just before midnight. Saturn rises out of the east just after sunrise.