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Color is Humming in Humboldt County

Mushrooms in Arcata make for fun color patches (10/21/23) Michelle Pontoni

Take a fall drive from Santa Rosa to Arcata and you just might be as lucky as color spotter Michelle Pontoni last Friday, October 20.

Pontoni reports that color searchers can find a little burst of yellow and orange among the evergreens around each corner driving north from Willits into Humboldt County. 
 
“The vineyards range from full green to brilliant multicolored,” she says. “There’s still time to enjoy the fall.”
 
Additionally, Pontoni reported from Arcata on Oct. 21.
 
“These are fun little color patches and are popping up all over in our super moist forests,” she explained of the happy little mushrooms growing in the region. Fall color can come in all shapes and sizes.
Highway 101 north of Willits (10/20/23) Michelle Pontoni
Highway 101 north of Willits (10/20/23) Michelle Pontoni
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A Dry Spell For Mycophiles

Magpie Mushroom (1/8/21) Gabriel Leete

While most Californians are enjoying this winter’s warm, sunny days, mycophile Gabriel Leete is out wandering the woods in disappointment as he dejectedly walks past the ink caps of Coprinopsis picacea, commonly called the Magpie Mushroom in Anderson. Normally, a wet winter causes all sorts of mushrooms to push up. So far, it’s been “fairly slow.”

Few mushrooms at lower elevations have appeared, and at higher elevations, freezing temperatures have retarded their development.

Redlead Roundhead (1/8/21) Gabriel Leete

In his wanderings, Gabriel found a large colony of Leratiomyces ceres commonly known as the Redlead Roundhead pushing up from shredded bark.

Parasola conopilus (1/8/21) Gabriel Leete

Gabriel sent images of Parasola conopilus (formerly called Psathyrella conopilus) and made the point that they soon will be known as Parasola conopilea.

It seems the mushroom was misidentified as a Psathyrella species, when under the microscope mycologists found it to be a Parasola. Then, an error in Latin agreement got the second half of its name corrected from conopilus to conopilea.

That seems too great an amount of attention and revelation for so common a brown mushroom. Parasola conopilea number from the hundreds to the thousands when they are flourishing. Unfortunately, such scenes are infrequent in this dry winter. 

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