Hiking on Dolly Sods, Part 1

The view east from Dolly Sods Road Overlook

My friend wanted to hike on Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia. I remembered that Herb and I had done a hike on the Wilderness Trail and part of the Rorhbaugh Trail up to the spot where the rock cliffs are located, about a decade ago. I had always wanted to see the rest of the Rorhbaugh Trail, so I suggested we start our hike on the Wilderness Trail and continue to the end of the Rohrbaugh Trail, a total of about 5.2 miles according to my trail map. We each drove our own car so that we could leave one car at the Rorhbaugh Trailhead and ride together in the other to our starting point at the Wildlife Trailhead. This would save us a long walk back.

The weather was marvelous, so we agreed to go out last Friday, the beginning of Labor Day weekend. We arrived at Dolly Sods Wilderness around eleven-thirty in the morning after a long dusty ride up the rough mountain road. The clouds were just breaking up on the plateau, allowing a clear view of the mountains to the east from the panoramic overlook at the entrance. It was windy and chilly, probably in the mid fifties, and I put on my lightweight raincoat for an extra layer of warmth.

 

Goldenrod and Jewelweed at the Wilderness Trailhead.

 

We drove down to the picnic area and had our lunch there, parking my friend's car, then drove back up to the Wildlife Trailhead in my car. There were lovely wildflowers everywhere, a hint of fall showing in the foliage and flowers.

We hadn't gone more than forty or fifty paces into the forest when a ray of sunlight highlighted a whitish fungal growth up on a tree trunk... it was Lion's Mane mushroom! Thank heaven my friend is an expert forager, and had her forage bag with her. She found a stick long enough to reach the Lion's Mane and coaxed it down. If we could find a few more, we'd have a tasty supper.

 

Lion's Mane mushroom

 

We started looking around more closely--and more mushrooms began to crop up. A group of large polypore-looking mushrooms was scattered upon the forest floor. We picked a sample for later identification, not sure of its edibility. I think they may be Hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum repandem) which are considered edible.

 

Hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum repandem)

Closer look at Hedgehog mushroom.

 

The trail was impossibly muddy in places, indicating that the summer rains had been plentiful. To make matters worse, a group of horseback riders had ridden on the trail recently, and their tracks made our going more like an obstacle course.

Although it had been dry for the past couple of weeks in our area, it's obvious this plateau gets a lot more rainfall than our area of Virginia. The Allegheny Front forms part of the Eastern Continental Divide, with the western side draining into the Mississippi River Basin, while the eastern side drains into the Atlantic, the Chesapeake Bay specifically.

 

Violet-stemmed mushroom (Laccaria ochropurpurea?)

 

The quantity and variety of fungi in this forest was amazing: lots of Polypores were growing on fallen and standing tree trunks: Turkeytails, and False Turkeytails, but the Horseshoe conks on this tree (Fomes fomentarius) were unusual. 

 

Horseshoe conks (Fomes fomentarius)

Coral fungi (Clavulina coralloides?

This high-elevation forest is botanically rich in many unusual plants such as club mosses, known as ground cedar (Diphasiastrum complanatum), ground pine (Lycopodium obscurum), ferns, as well as many plants more likely to be found in New England and eastern Canada, such as red spruce and birch. We spotted and harvested more Lion's Mane, one specimen high up on a trunk required a large branch to bring it down.

 

Lady Ferns and Ground Cedar.

 

A big tree with a unusual seed pods caught my eye, and on closer examination turned out to be a huge Cucumber magnolia (Magnolia acuminata). A group of several large Mountain ashes in fruit brought seasonal color to the late summer forest.

 

Cucumber magnolia with ripening seedpods (Magnolia acuminata).

Mountain ash trees in fruit (Sorbus aucuparia)

Beechdrops, a parasitic plant that feeds on the roots of Beech Trees, were still flowering, if a bit past it. We also collected a bit of Chaga mushroom on a trunk--these black fungi look like burn scars and associate only with Birch trees. They have medicinal properties and are used in Russian folk medicine to treat a variety of conditions.

 

Beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana)

 

Chaga mushroom (Inonotus oblicuus)

Everywhere we turned, there were different kinds of mushrooms. A piece of greenish spalted wood on the ground gave evidence that Green Elf Cups (Chlorociboria aeruginacens) had at one time colonized it--the elf cups are a rare sight. All these mushrooms and we had barely covered a mile! No wonder we were walking so slowly, it takes time to take it all in!

 

A mushroom with Volva--an Amanita? 

 

Spalted wood indicates Green Elf Cup colonization.

Yellow Waxy Cap mushrooms (Hygrocybe flavecens)

Eventually we came to the first of the sods--the season was too advanced to see many butterflies, but there were a few Great Spangled Fritillaries on the goldenrod and thistles. I remembered these meadows buzzing with countless butterflies and bees when Herb and I visited so many years ago, but that was in early August, at the height of summer, and now it was getting on toward fall.

 

The first of the sods.

 

Great Spangled Fritillary on Thistle

We reentered the forest, finding yet more mushrooms we couldn't identify.

 

On the Wildlife Trail.

Cluster of brown mushrooms.

To be continued in Part 2.

Meeting Mushrooms

Charlie Aller leading the mushroom identification class.

 

Last Sunday I drove down to Covesville, VA for a mushroom identification class "Basic Skills for Meeting Mushrooms," led by local mycologist Charlie Aller. We met at Hechyion Orchards on a hot and sunny morning. After a brief intro on how and where mushrooms grow, the different forms and shapes of the amazing fungi family, and the substrates upon which they grow, we set out to find some on the forested hillsides of the farm.

 

Turkeytail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor)

Medicinal mushrooms growing on a fallen log.

Our first finds were two groups of bracket fungi growing on fallen logs. We had discussed that one of the main distinguishing characteristics of mushrooms that holds clues to their species is that one group grows on wood, and another group on soil as a substrate. This is the medium in which the mushroom mycelium grows--the mushrooms themselves are actually the fruiting bodies of this thread-like structure that breaks down the organic material in the wood or soil with the help of bacteria and enzymes.

The turkey tail mushroom (Trametes  versicolor) has bands of different colors, and is a common sight in forests. These type of mushrooms are referred to as polypores. The other bracket fungi (which name escaped me) has been found to have medicinal properties.

 

Green elfcup (Chlorociboria aeruginascens)

Green elfcup

An unusual fungi I'd never seen before was the green elfcup (Chlorociboria aeruginascens)--these tiny cups are a lovely blue-green and seldom fruit--the mycelium tends to stain the wood it colonizes, a phenomenon called spalting.

Golden Thread Cordyceps (Tolypocladium ophioglossoides)

Charlie digs for truffles under the Golden Thread Cordyceps.

Deer ruffle (Elaphomyces sp.) under Golden thread Cordyceps.

Another fascinating find was the Golden Thread Cordyceps (it's no longer classified in this genus), a darkish, club-headed fungus that has a gold-colored thread at its base, and parasitizes an inedible truffle called a deer truffle. Charlie dug under the Cordyceps to find a small truffle below, and slit it open, to show us the white spores inside.

 

Fungus parasitizing a beetle.

Speaking of parasitic fungi, Charlie also found what looked to me like a few fibers of ordinary mycelium growing on a pine log, but he spotted a beetle underneath it that was in the process of being consumed by this particular fungus. These types of fungi are known as entomopathogenic--nature is at times much stranger than we realize!

 

Cinnabar chanterelle (Cantharellus cinnabarinus)

I've seen these tiny orange-colored mushrooms before, and was surprised to learn that they were
Cinnabar chanterelles--they are edible, but according to Charlie, not the tastiest of the chanterelles, and so tiny they are hardly worth collecting. Unfortunately, we didn't come across any chanterelles of eating size. One has to look out for false chanterelles, which look very similar to the real ones, but are poisonous.

Reishi mushrooms on a trunk (Ganoderma lucidum)

As we worked our way up a hill, our next finds were some very large Reishi mushrooms growing on an old oak at the top. Charlie could observe the spores being released under the caps. Someone brought an orange-capped mushroom they'd found, which he identified as an Amanita flavoconia (in Charlie's hand in the first photo on this post), AKA yellow patches mushroom.

 

Giant Coker's Amanita (Amanita cokeri)

One lady found this giant classic-shaped mushroom, Coker's Amanita, on the hill. I learned that there are a few members of the Amanita genus that are edible, though most are poisonous, some deadly. Charlie explained that the danger with toxic mushrooms is that not only will they cause a lot of intestinal distress when ingested, but when the chemical compounds in these reach the liver, the liver converts them into an even more toxic form of chemicals that can cause organ failure very quickly. There are a few antidotes, but he emphasized that no one should ever eat a mushroom they've not identified correctly. Even then some people can have allergic reactions to normally edible mushrooms, so it's wise to eat only a little the first time, to test it on yourself.

 

Violet-grey bolete (Tylopilus plumbeoviolaceus)

There were a few other mushrooms found, but the last one I photographed was this beautiful specimen of the violet-grey bolete--such a lovely color! It's not edible, though, it's very bitter. It was getting very hot and we were well past the time allotted when our sweaty group finally headed back to the farm for a wrap-up. Charlie answered more questions and announced the following weekend's workshop on growing mushrooms. Much as I would have loved to do this one, after two Sundays with a lot of driving, I really am not up to making the drive there one more time--maybe next year.

 

Pencil sketches of my mushroom specimens.

I was able to bring home a few specimens so that I could depict them later on. I did this colored pencil drawing of these two the next day when I was fresher. The Reishi mushroom specimen is fascinating because it has a lateral stem--most from this variety grow stemless, directly on the tree trunks, but they can also have this form. I love the colors of both mushrooms, which are so evanescent. 

Now that I know a bit more about mushrooms, I plan to do some of my own mushroom forays closer to home to see what I can find--stay tuned!