Brief-Form Post #44: January Fungi Discoveries along the CCC Trail at Alabama’s Joe Wheeler State Park

Brief-Form Past #44

I am pleased to add the 44th of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I get wordy with my routine Posts. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will publish these brief Posts regularly.

January Fungi Discoveries

I spent January 23 and 24, 2025, at Joe Wheeler State Park primarily to learn more about the 1930s Wheeler Dam Village (housing construction workers and their families) and the 1930s to early 1950s Recreation Area remains along the CCC Trail on the hillside above Wheeler Dam overlooking Wilson Lake, which lies just downstream of Wheeler Dam. This photo essay reports on mushrooms I photographed as we performed our intended archeological pursuits.

I am not a mycologist. I am simply a fungi hobbyist and edible wild mushroom enthusiast. Lumpy bracket mushrooms densely occupy this fallen hickory. Their nearly luminescent whiteness evidences freshness; algae have not yet darkened their surfaces. They are not edible due to their hard, woody nature. Located within the old Recreation Area, English ivy proliferates as a ground cover. The ivy-mushroom combination (right) presents an aesthetic package.

This is another Trametes species (aesculi), which like lumpy bracket is a saprophyte (consumes dead wood). It is an agent of decomposition, not a parasite that infects and decays living trees.

Pseudoinonotus (dryadeus?) is a bracket fungus with inedible fibrous flesh. The genus commonly grows at the base of oak trees infected by its wood-consuming hyphae. My forest pathology professor would have characterized this genus as a disease when I took the course in 1972…more than a half-century ago. I admit to needing a forest pathology update! Just yesterday (I’m drafting this on April 9, 2025) I wandered through a bottomland hardwood forest on the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. Conks, brackets, burls, hollows, catfaces, rusts, scars, and and other disfigurements are ubiquitous. As with so much in Nature, the more I learn, the less I know!

What I do know is that a mushroom known as funeral bell is likely not edible!

And I do know that spore-ripe puffballs are fun for those of us who never age beyond finding mystery, joy, and amusement in the natural world. Einstein recognized the magic of wonder:

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in
awe, is as good as dead, a snuffled-out candle.

Poofing puffballs never grows tiresome…and I refuse to age beyond enjoying such a simple pleasure.

Sure, I understand the biological function of ripening puffballs and the reproductive necessity of spore dissemination. Perhaps most importantly, I also know the basic tenet of foraging and consuming puffballs: The inside of edible puffball mushrooms should be solid and pure white, like a marshmallow, or fresh mozzarella balls (eartheplanet.org). Lord, give me a wet field loaded with giant puffballs at the perfect stage of purity. I will do the rest with sharp knife, a light flour coating, seasoning salt, wide skillet, and sizzling butter. Oh, the wonders of Nature!

Closing

I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements. A single trek along a forested trail discloses only a brief moment in time, obscuring the decades prior and the future ahead, isolating us from the scope and scale of the grand forest cycle of life. Albert Einstein captured the sentiment I felt as we explored the Wonder of decay and renewal:

He who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffled-out candle.

Alabama State Parks Foundation