The elusive dog’s nose fungus
I led a mushroom walk in the woods a few weeks ago for the Finger Lakes Land Trust. It was a lovely Fall day, and my little group found many handsome and curious mushrooms. Among them was one that was handsomer and curiouser than the rest. Its finder Susan quickly dubbed it the “dog’s nose fungus.” Another member of the group argued that it better resembled a small and delicious chocolate tart, but it was getting close to lunch time and I’m not sure that he was thinking clearly.
For those of you unacquainted with the texture (and the cold wet feeling) of a dog’s nose, I have included Exhibit A, a photograph of the nose of Ebumu. Our find resembled a dog nose in its bumpy texture, its blackness, and also in its glistening wetness–a wetness produced from the fungus itself without help from rain or dew. It was, coincidentally, almost exactly the size of my dog’s nose. Here it is:
Turns out this is Peridoxylon petersii, an uncommon fungus in these parts, though it is perhaps commoner in the southeastern US. We have no records of it at all in the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium (CUP). It’s been found just a few times ever by participants in the Northeast Mycological Foray3, and the New York Botanical Garden has only a handful of New York records4. It’s also known as Camarops petersii—whether you put it in the genus Camarops or the genus Peridoxylon depends on whether you think it’s distinctly different enough from other species of Camarops to warrant its own genus1. A recent paper by L. Vasilyeva and colleagues2 presents a good argument for calling it Peridoxylon, and I’m sticking with them.
This fungus is a large perithecial ascomycete, not a mushroom. Its fruiting bodies grow on rotted logs (probably oak, in this case), and presumably the mycelium is breaking down the wood somehow. Its black spores are produced just below the glistening upper surface in tiny pear-shaped structures called perithecia. Most of its relatives make minute fruiting bodies too small to see with the naked eye. The large fruiting body of P. petersii includes many individual perithecia–you can tell they’re lurking just below the surface from the little bumps, which are where the perithecia open to allow the spores to shoot out.
So here’s an apparently rare fungus (at least for New York). It turns out that it’s hard to say for sure how rare it is, because New York doesn’t have a list of rare fungi, nor even a list of the fungi known from the state. I’m thinking it’s time to start developing such lists, at least for macrofungi. It’s a tough job, because fungi are hard to survey for (being both ephemeral and small), and they’re hard for ordinary folks to identify. I think it’ll take a community effort, and I’d like you folks to help.
I’m going to start with a simple request:
which macrofungi do YOU think are rare in New York?
Leave me a comment or get in touch and we’ll roll up our sleeves and get started.
- Nannfeldt, J. A. 1972. Camarops Karst. (Sphaeriales-Boliniaceae), with special regard to its European species. Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift 66:336-376.
- Vasilyeva, L. N., S. L. Stephenson, and A. N. Miller. 2007. Pyrenomycetes of the Great Smoky Moutnains National Park. IV. Biscogniauxia, Camaropella, Camarops, Camillea, Peridoxylon and Whalleya. Fungal Diversity 25:219-231.
- The Northeast Mycological Foray (NEMF) Lists, maintained online by Gene Yetter. (thanks Gene!)
- Go ahead, search for Camarops petersii in the New York Botanical Garden herbarium. (thanks again, Gene!)
Hi Kathie. We find this at least once a year in Wisconsin. I like the dog’s nose name. We have been calling it black licorice drops because of its shiny blackness. Maybe convergent evolution for dogs that like licorice?
I have found this fungus several times this season. I am surprised to read that it is considered rare in our area. I forage in the western Fingerlakes. I will keep my eye out for additional samples. Perhaps they are simply overlooked, rather than rare. Liz
Hi Liz,
One of the things I really like about this blog is that I get to hear back from people like you! Peridoxylon petersii is certainly rarely recorded in New York if you look at herbarium records. However, herbaria reflect the often idiosyncratic interests of the Curators and depositors, not the true distributions of fungi.
Maybe with the help of people like you, we can find out what’s really rare, versus underreported! Thanks for posting your comment.
Hi Kathie. Thanks for your response! This is a great forum. I never would have taken notice, except for your label of ‘Dog’s nose fungus’ which caught my eye, and perfectly described the round little lumps I had seen on my forays. When I first saw one, the image of a dog’s nose is exactly what came to mind. This peculiar resemblance made my first and subsequent sightings memorable. I agree with Tom . . . I like the dog’s nose name. Very cleaver. And, I agree with you, its time to develop a list of rare New York state fungi. I would be happy to participate. I am a novice amateur; obscure fungus is my niche. Liz
Kathie,
I am a Camarops aficionado and think a dog’s nose is a perfect analogy to this somewhat obscure asco but for the apparent absence of perithecial bodies in the canine’s olfactory apparatus (I say apparent because I don’t own a dog, so I can’t be sure). In any event, I’ve found Camarops petersii on 8 oak logs in NH and MA, always on large or formerly “old growth” logs; on one log in Concord, MA, I found 27 specimens in various stages of repair and disrepair. I also found one Camarops on a hemlock log in NH — either a C. petersii had “jumped” hosts, or it’s a new species for the Northeast (C. petersii is exclusively on oak).
Lawrence Millman
A real live Camarops aficionado has posted a comment to the Blog! That’s awesome. So Lawrence (and any other Camarops aficionados out there), you must also be an aficionado of other strange and rarish things. What other weirdlings do you consider rare in your area?
Kathy,
Besides C. petersii, here’s a list of the “strange and rarish” things I’m investigating:
1. Echinodontium ballouii. Presumed extinct, but a friend and I
rediscovered it two years ago. It will be the subject of a cover article in the next issue of Mushroom the Journal.
2. Leucopholiota decora. Considered rare, but I think that’s because
people see it from a distance and think it’s simply a Pholiota.
3. Bridgeoporus nobillisimus. The so-called Noble Polypore. There are fewer than 100 in existence. I made a point of visiting 47 of them a few years ago. Sort of like a pilgrim visiting holy sites. (Note: The species is located in the Northwest rather than the Northeast.)
4. Pluteus salicinus. I had found this Psilocybe-boasting species only two or three times, but then I found a large clump of them on a stump last Sunday. Perhaps they’re more common in upstate NY?
5. Volvariella bombycina. Once every two or three years, including
— most recently — a fruiting on a tree stump transformed into a chair outside my apt. in Cambridge, MA.
6.. Cordyceps capitata. Most people in the Northeast think they’ve found C. capitata when in fact they’ve probably found C. canadensis.
If they checked the spores, they would realize the difference… ( I
included this because I believe you’re interested in Cordyceps…)
7. Gomphidius nigricans. Found only once — in Subarctic Quebec!
Lawrence
Hi! I just read your post about mushroom hunting and was very glad to see it. I am from Russia and always loved foraging mushrooms which I know quite well how to do. When we lived in MA, I always foraged on the Cape where there is a lot of good mushrooms. But when we moved to Corning, it is very hard for me to find a good forest which has nice small strails and a lot of mushrooms to hunt. Maybe you can give me an advice what places around Ithaca you would recommend? I will appreciate it.
Thank you a lot!
Marina
Hi Kathy,
For your record, I collected Camerops petersii in Prospect Park, Brooklyn this Sunday (Sept. 20, 2009). It’s amazing to me how identical the specimen I found is to the photo on your blog. If you want, I have a photo I can send.
Don Recklies
I came across your article last week,
and then found two of these yesterday (10 October 2009) in Frick Park, Pittsburgh PA.
Formerly considered very rare in the Northeast, Camarops petersii is now showing up everywhere. Let me list a
few of the possible reasons for this. The species inhabits only well-rotten oak logs, and those logs are older
this year than they were last year, older last year than they were the year before, and so on, with the result
that C. petersii is finding itself increasingly with suitable habitats. Also, I suspect that at some of these sites
the site-keepers have become sufficiently knowledgable to realize that an old log is a valuable ecological
entity, and thus it should not be considered an eyesore and removed. And probably thanks to this blog,
more people are looking for this subtlely, weirdly beautiful asco.
Lawrence MIllman
I have to admit when I saw the picture, and hadn’t yet read the article, I got nausea thinking that it was an actual dog nose!