In 2016, the Rattray Marsh temporarily had a wide wood-chip covered path very close to the Old Poplar Row parking spot. The path was used while the crews removed dead and dying Ash trees. I don’t normally walk off trail but I did this time to let a large group of joggers pass (and to keep an eye on several Kinglets that had been adjacent to the main path until the noise startled them.) To my surprise, right in the middle of this temporary path was a cluster of small white and off-white fungi which had been drizzled with clear, bright ruby red juice!
A Fungus That Looks Good Enough To Drink?
Although I’ve never had the slightest interest in eating wild mushrooms, these ones actually looked rather appealing. They looked vaguely like a sweet dessert of some kind, at least at first glance.
I wasn’t quite sure what the juice was or where it had come from. It was a dry, sunny day after several other dry days so it was unlikely to be rain water. Yet the “mushroom” was dripping with not just beads of cranberry-coloured juice but also some small puddles of it.
I’ve never seen a fungus that was wet like this before but I did think I remembered seeing photos of one.
Strawberries and Cream Anyone?
A quick search on the internet found what is probably the correct type. (I would NEVER eat any mushroom or fungus based only on an internet identification, though! Please do not ever use my attempts at id to make a life-threatening decision either!)
UPDATE NOTE: Good thing I would never eat anything. Turns out my first id of these was DEAD wrong. They are not “Strawberries and Cream.” formally called Hydnellum peckii.
These are Blushing Rosette (Abortiporus biennis).
See https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15573216
Unless it died there by coincidence this ant or insect did find the juice toxic.
It’s a good thing I didn’t try to eat or drink them.
These were some other clusters growing nearby. The long yellow stem is from a regular maple leaf. These aren’t particularly big.
Do These Fungi Grow Directly from Wood Or….?
The ones I saw seemed to be growing from the stumps of small trees which had been cut off flush to the ground. I had assumed that they were small Ash trees but now I’m not so sure.
According to mushroomexpert.com, these fungi do usually grow in association with wood.
Where Did the Orange – Red Fungi Fluid Come From?
There are many websites that mention these colourful fungi but don’t explain why they have juice.
It does look like the liquid starts as small beads which eventually join together and form puddles.
I finally found an interesting article online by Erast Parmasto and Andrus Voitk that provides a clearly explained hypothesis. They think the moisture is just a by-product of rapid growth. The excess water is exuded from the fungi in a process called “guttation.” In their photo example of a Hydnellum peckii from Gros Morne, they point out that the fungus is soft and light in colour, signs that it is freshly growing, which is likely why it still has fluid on the outside.
The authors say that the red colour to the juice is from “terphenylquinone dye (or a derivative), a pigment produced by this genus of mushrooms.”
Because my mushrooms were not H peckii I’m not sure if the dye is the same or not.
The larger and possibly older drops and puddles are much darker than the small more clear orange ones. You can see the white structure and texture of the fungi better in this photo, too.
When I was looking at these small fungi at the Rattray, I noticed several nearby ones did not have the red juice on them. (In fact, I also did a quick check to see if there was an empty Kool-aid container anywhere around or a toddler in a stroller!)
Now I wonder if the “drier” fungi were simply older or much younger and growing more slowly. Given that the day after I visited, the rains began and continued for several days, I guess I wasn’t able to check.
I will keep an eye out for these strangely appealing fungi in the future, though!
Related Reading
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