September 28, 2023 Mushrooms, trail blazing and hanging signs to keep hunters away

We started at the south side of the property along the road and hung signs, cut small and dying trees and laid them along the path perpendicular to the water flow and trailblazed a new path. We wound around along the edge of Saint Andrew’s Forest Farm property line along the power lines. We also followed the waterway at bottom of property to property markers at southwest corner. We found interesting mushrooms, plants and finally found paw paw trees.

We did not see the young male black bear. We saw a small lizard in the clearing up top. We saw and heard many birds in the forest. Hunting season starts tomorrow. We’ve got our signs up and hope the animals hide out from those hunters. Especially the young black bear. We heard his range might be 5-10 miles for a young bear. For an adult bear, 10 to 20 miles.

Gentiana alba, a herbaceous species of flowering plant in the Gentian family Gentianaceae, producing yellowish-white colored flowers from thick white taproots. It is native to North America from Manitoba through Ontario in the north, south to Oklahoma, Arkansas and North Carolina, and it is listed as rare, endangered, threatened or extirpated in parts of this range.^{[2] Found near the south waterway.}

Calostoma ravenelii. Found along the South Trail. This is a comparatively small species of Calostoma with a dry, yellowish spore case that sits on a braided stem structure. It can be separated from other Calostoma species by the fact that the spore case is not red and initially covered with gelatin, its lack of a torn and felty “collar” under the spore case and its “beak” (the scar-like perforation that develops at the top of the spore case), which is red overall.

Coprinopsis picacea, commonly known as the magpie mushroom, magpie fungus, or magpie inkcap fungus, is a species of fungus in the family Psathyrellaceae. It was first described in 1785 by French mycologist Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard in 1785 as Agaricus picaceus. Found at bottom of clearing. The cap is initially egg-shaped, reaching a width of 7 cm. Later it opens up and takes on a bell shape that is up to 8 cm wide. The cap is serrated and colored white on very young mushrooms. It breaks open with increasing age, so that the beige to dark brown background emerges. Remnants of the white, grayish to cream-colored velum remain on the cap as flakes, giving the impression of woodpecker or magpie plumage. With age, the brim of the cap rolls up and dissolves. The lamellae are very close and are initially greyish-white, then pink to gray in color. Eventually they melt, dripping and black, giving it the name inkcap.

An older magpie ink cap mushroom. Poisonous.

Scleroderma polyrhizum. Identifying features include the baseball-like stature and shape; the tough, thick skin; the hard, black interior that turns to dust in old age; the way the mushroom splits open and peels back (a little like the rays of a star); the smooth to pocked or pitted (but not prominently scaly) surface; and the habitat in grass and disturbed-ground settings. Probably saprobic, but possibly mycorrhizal; growing alone, scattered, or gregariously in grass and in disturbed-ground settings; often appearing in urban settings; summer, fall, and early winter; widely distributed in North America.
Fruiting Body: 8-13 cm across before splitting and spreading; round or nearly round; very tough; partially submerged in the ground; surface when young fairly smooth, often covered with whitish down; with age becoming pocked, pitted, or minutely scaly in places, and usually covered with adhering soil and debris; often bruising reddish or yellowish when rubbed; with maturity splitting near the top and peeling back in irregular rays to expose the spore mass; skin to 5 mm thick or more, whitish but blushing pink when sliced; sometimes with white rhizomorphs attached to the base; odor not distinctive.

Cranefly orchid leafs emerging for winter.

This club-shaped Xylaria species is common on hardwood sticks and logs in the northeastern and midwestern United States. It often has a longer stem structure than other species in the genus, but this feature cannot be relied on to identify it with certainty. Xylaria longipes is somewhat variable in its appearance, but defining features include its medium size, its club-shaped head, and its spores, which feature spiraling germ slits. Ecology: Saprobic on decaying hardwood logs and sticks (especially the debris of beech and maples), growing directly from the wood; growing alone or gregariously; causing a soft rot; spring through fall; common in northeastern North America and in the Midwest, but occasionally reported elsewhere on the continent (though it may be absent in tropical areas). The illustrated and described collections are from Illinois.
Fruiting Body: 2.5–6.5 cm tall; 0.5–1.5 cm thick; shaped more or less like a club, with a rounded tip; grayish to brownish when young, becoming dark brown to black with maturity; surface often becoming cracked and scaly with maturity; stem often proportionally long, but also frequently short or nearly absent, black, covered with black to rusty brown or reddish fuzz near the base; interior flesh white and tough; perithecia in mature fruiting bodies up to about 1 mm across, spherical, just below the surface. Found along the waterway.

Asimina triloba, the American papaw, pawpaw, paw paw, or paw-paw, among many regional names, is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, producing a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit.^[3][4][5] Asimina is the only temperate genus in the tropical and subtropical flowering plant family Annonaceae, and Asimina triloba has the most northern range of all. We were delighted to find this by the south side near the waterway. The leaves were so interesting and smooth. No jaggedy edges.