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Report from the Pacific Northwest of NA


vitog

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I haven't seen any reports from the western US or Canada for quite a while; presumably because there isn't much to report. Anyway, here is a summary of what has so far been a really lousy year for mushrooming out west.

First, it was a warm and relatively dry winter, resulting in a small snowpack that melted early, leaving the mountains drier than usual. Then it warmed up earlier than normal, and the spring rains stopped at the end of April. This combination produced my earliest morel finds ever, on Mar 29, but also ended the morel season prematurely. I recorded 667 black and blonde natural morels in my database this year, compared to over 1200 last year. That doesn't include fire morels, which were particularly disappointing because there were several large fires last year in areas close enough for day trips. I checked two of them out but found only a couple hundred black morels, mostly tiny and dried out, far less than these areas would be capable of, given enough precipitation. Oh well, at least the warm, dry weather has produced many more nearby fires this year; so there is hope for next morel season (if the usual rains return).

Since the end of April, we've had a total of 46 mm (less than 2 inches) of rain recorded at Vancouver International Airport; that's why there is little to write about regarding mushrooming this summer. However, it isn't a total loss. Last weekend on a hike in the local mountains, I noticed a large, old Boletus edulis alongside the trail. So I decided to check out one of my usual Porcini spots today. Well, there were very few mushrooms of any type; but a very few widely scattered specimens (Russula, Cortinarius, Chroogomphus) were evident. When I got close to my destination, I found a perfect, young B. edulis right at the edge of the trail. It's shown in the photo below. The tube mouths were still white and edible, and there was no trace of maggot holes. I found another larger, older one farther along the trail. It had yellow tube mouths and some maggot holes only in one corner of the cap. So it was still usable after removing the tubes and maggoty section. The only other B. edulis that I found today was a tiny button that was riddled with maggot holes and partly enveloped by Hypomyces mold. It had evidently stopped growing shortly after erupting from the ground due to lack of moisture. So, the moral of the story is that there are a few edible mushrooms to be found in the mountains; but you have to be lucky to find them.

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The drought is even worse to the south of us, especially in California. However, there have been a few variable and spotty showers around lately; Seattle received 30 mm of rain last Friday, when we just got a trace. Usually they are a bit drier than us. And it almost always rains significantly more in the mountains than at the low elevation weather station sites. So there is hope that a particular site received enough rain to produce a few interesting mushrooms. It would be nice to hear from some of the other members in the west.

I don't know if the current El Nino conditions will help. I understand that, on average for the PNW, that weather pattern produces warmer, wetter conditions during the winter rainy season and warmer, drier conditions during the summer. That seems to be close to what we experienced this year, but the weather here is not very predictable. So there is definitely hope for next year and even for this fall and winter. In the meantime I have to spend a lot of my time hand watering the garden because we have stage 3 restrictions on water usage at present. It's a good thing that I retired at the start of July; otherwise, I would be spending all of my weekends watering the garden.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unfortunately the predictions and assumptions for the pacific northwest are looking pretty dire. Even up here in NH we're looking at some pretty doomy long term prospects. Mushrooms are the least of our worries. If it rain's like crazy next summer they'll be back. The wild berries and edible plants that wild life depend on will suffer greatly next year with a fairly sizable lack of new plants due to this years poor reproduction and over foraging by humans and wild life, many being unable to flower or fruit and then seed. Not to mention the potential for losing younger trees with less established roots, especially in areas with lots of competition. Wet lands are hitting extreme low points, some with the potential to disappear for years if not entirely.

Very few parts of North America have had above average rainfall this summer, Florida being the obvious exception. At this point I know I'm hoping for a massive winter.

El Nino may not be all that generous this time around, but that's not my guess to wager.

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Difficult to be optimistic with such persistently oppressive conditions up until this point. Hope things improve along the West Coast.... and in New Hampshire, as well. Here in most of eastern PA it's presently very dry. Our very wet June has carried us through the summer so far. No mushrooms to speak of right now, but other plants and wildlife seem okay for the time being. The June rain was very important for us, coming on the heels of a major Gypsy Moth defoliation.

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We'll see rain here within a few weeks. It is a bit strange that this time last year was much wetter, yet I'm finding more mushrooms this year than last.

When you have to start daily waterings on well established fruit trees, something is definitely afoot.

One of my spots in Londonderry, NH has a bunch of bridges that used to be maybe 2-3 feet above water that are now 6-8 feet above slightly damp mud. In all my time going here I have never seen that. A mountain biker fell off a bridge there a couple of weeks ago and got seriously hurt as the bridges are rough and about 20 inches wide. He was probably the dude who ran over the only decent flush of cinnibars all season. Karma. I mean, they had to back up and go over it several times to destroy that many mushrooms. The mountain bikers around here are severely destructive. I have little sympathy for most of them as many tend to be dangerous, destructive, entitled, and flat out rude. Much like many road cyclists around here I guess. You can't live here without owning/driving a car and yet these folks act like cars shouldn't be on the road when they are. Modern anti-social behavior often causes me to tangent rant.

We've had a lot of dry heat and blow dryer winds over the last month and a half which makes things that much worse.

As mentioned before, there is not a blue, black, or huckle berry in sight. That's something I do not recall ever seeing. That and lots of wild life in strange, residential locations with no real woods in sight. We've also been having a good number of mountain lion sightings even in my immediate area. While in the past I would have considered this nonsense, and while I have still seen no signs of a big cat out in the woods, perhaps the current weather situation could be bringing them here? Food is scarce, but there's still enough to keep prey animals, especially white tails, healthy. Even our absurdly large population.

Video here: http://boston.cbslocal.com/video/7302174-mountain-lion-spotted-in-manchester/

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Well, the drought here in the PNW has been broken, at least for a while. It started to rain on Friday, and rain or showers are forecast through Wednesday, with a significant total accumulation. Since this rain has arrived while it is still warm, a good crop of Boletes in the mountains should follow. I also expect Chanterelles to be popping up at lower elevations. How long they will be around will depend on whether we get more rain in September.

The rain arrived too late for the blueberries in the mountains. Similar to what brianf described for New England, the wild blueberry crop here is dismal. The bears are going to have a difficult time finding enough food this fall; I can visualize their munching on mushrooms to get the protein from the included maggots, as I've noted in the past.

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We have a few family groups of black bears scattered throughout some of the larger tracks of forest down here. They're small even for black bears and generally get along well with people, fortunately. It's not uncommon to hear about black bears wreaking havoc on people's garbage.

Good to hear about the rain though vitog. The long term prognosis is still rather grim, but at least you'll see some mushrooms in the short term.

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Natenut, how much rain have you gotten lately? I measured 102 mm (about 4") during the week starting Aug 28, and I've already seen a few Chanterelle buttons popping up. If we get additional rain, as forecast for this coming Tuesday, we should have a pretty good crop during the next couple of weeks.

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I'm not really sure. I'm assuming at least 2+ inches. i was at one of my spots along highway 26 in oregon.

According to intellicast the last 7 days for this spot was only about an inch or less. http://www.intellicast.com/National/Precipitation/Weekly.aspx?location=USOR0284

Looks like cascade locks has been getting some good rain. maybe i will take a ride out there this week.

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  • 3 months later...

Here's an update on the PNW, at least the part I live in. There has been plenty of rain since August, and the usual mushrooms have been showing up. However, their appearance has been sporadic; and the quantities are much lower than usual. My impression is that no amount of moisture during the fall mushroom season will make up for a lack of precipitation in late spring and early summer, which must be the time that the fungal mycelia make most of their growth. The only good thing about this fall season is that the weather has been mild so far; and there are still some edibles popping up, long past their normal season. I'm still finding a few young Hedgehog Mushrooms, both Hydnum repandum and H. umbilicatum (although overall production is way down). I also collected a couple of usable but not young Golden Chanterelles. By far the most common edible now is the Winter Chanterelle, as can be seen in the photo below (from yesterday). This is their normal season, but they are not nearly as abundant as usual. One nice thing about the small number of Winter Chanterelles is that they are larger than usual, since more nutrients are available for each mushroom in the smaller clusters that are appearing. The largest specimens are normally singles.

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Nice photo! You can play "where's Waldo the Hedgehog"... actually looks like two Hedgehogs. The western Winter Chanterelles are colored differently from what I get here in the east. And I get mine mainly in mid-autumn. I think there may be more than one species name used for these. I have seen the name "Craterellus neotubaeformis" applied to some western material. As far as I know, the eastern ones are still called Craterellus tubaeformis.

C. tubaeformis found in PA.

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Thanks, Dave. There are at least two of the little Hedgehogs visible in the basket, along with one regular Chanterelle. The colors aren't right because I used a flash for that photo. I took another one in natural light; but, because the light was fairly dim, the longer exposure is a little blurred from using a hand-held simple camera. For a proper color comparison, here is the other photo.

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We've been getting rain almost every day during December; so the colors in most mushrooms are somewhat "washed out". I see lots of red Russulas that are almost white.

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  • 1 month later...

On Feb 4, I checked out a spot where I had left a very young Hedgehog button back in December. It had matured by now but didn't get very big - only a couple of cm wide. So I harvested it, along with some Winter Chanterelles, which are now mostly too old, with very few young ones showing up. One surprise that showed up was a sizable coral mushroom (around 15 cm wide) along with a smaller specimen, both shown below. I can't recall previously seeing anything similar at this time of year, although there are plenty of small white corals in the woods. These are still young specimens that were not conspicuous when I looked in the same area 2 or 3 weeks earlier. I didn't examine them closely; so I'm not sure what species they represent.

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Thanks, Dave. I don't harvest Ramarias; so I didn't pay close attention to detailed characteristics. I did enter the obvious information visible in the photo into a program called Matchmaker that is specifically designed to identify mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest; and it came up with a list of about ten possibilities, all Ramarias except for one species from a different genus. I didn't follow up with a comparison of all of the possible species because I think that the photo represents immature specimens that may change appearance when their tips elongate.

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