Pink Beds Camping Foray – July 24-25, 2009

This foray was designed with new members in mind and concentrated on finding and identifying fungi on our list of the “Top 50 Mushrooms in Western North Carolina”.

A number of us gathered on Friday afternoon at the White Pine (North) group campground in the Pisgah National Forest.  We found the campsite in good condition, set up our tents, and wandered into the surrounding forest to collect mushrooms and wine berries (which I discovered is the local name for wild raspberries).  Arnie Cremer built a camp fire, dinners were cooked and shared, a bottle or two was brought out, and we sat around the fire until bedtime, miraculously untroubled by mosquitoes or smoke from the fire.

The next morning we met other members at the Pink Beds picnic area – 27 members took part in total.  The earliest arrivals found three beautiful Cauliflower Mushrooms (Sparrasis spathulata) on a pine stump right beside the picnic shelter.  What a great start! 

Mycologist Coleman McClenaghan gave us an introduction to the main families of fungi that we could expect to find.  Then we formed into groups and forayed along the Pink Beds trails.  After meeting back at the shelter for lunch we decided to try explore some different locations and set off by car to look at side trails and camping areas along Yellow Gap Road.

The weather had been fairly dry for several days, but nonetheless we had an excellent haul for the day, and Coleman was able to identify almost all the collections and give us a tour of the tables.  There were 60 identified species, including no less than 24 of the Top 50.  Six species proved to be first-time finds (at least since the current foray list was started in 2005).  They were:  Amanita pantherina (Panther Amanita) , Amanita vaginata (Grisette), Clavaria ornatipes (Fuzzy-foot Coral), Inocybe calamistrata, Nolanea strictior, and Suillus placidus (White Suillus).

We found plenty of Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) – enough for everyone to take some home to eat.  Olga Katic, a.k.a. the “Cordiceps Queen”, collected large numbers of those remarkable little fungi for Tradd Cotter’s study of their use in controlling insect pests.

In the first four forays of the year we have collected 33 of the Top 50 list – most of them more than once.  The rest are mainly meadow species, which we don’t expect to find in the woods, or fall species which we will undoubtedly start finding soon.

A short rain shower marked the end of foraying.  Back at the White Pine campsite we set up for the evening’s pot luck dinner.  Amazing quantities of delicious food appeared … and disappeared.  Greg Carter grilled his Shiitakes for us over the camp fire.  As dusk fell all but the campers reluctantly crept away.

Photo credits: Chi-Sing Chang, all rights reserved