Here is what we looked at & talked about at our first virtual WMS meeting on Zoom that was all about everyone collaborating on iNaturalist identifications together, along with celebrating some star finds:

• Jacki's mystery maybe-bolete she's been seeing a lot of recently. UPDATE: it is no longer a mystery to Jacki; She used resources on mushroomobserver.org as well as other pictures online and now thinks it is Polyporus radicatus!  The edibility is reported as choice by some, tough by others. So now Jacki is doing a myco-culinary experiment to find out. There are only 135 currently reported at all on iNat with only 14 observed as of yet in Wisconsin. Many of those other WI P. radicatus were, by the way, spotted by our fellow project-member Howard (Howard64). It is really interesting to see our project members already noticeably improving this site's data for our region.

 

• Rose's Tolypocladium longisegmentatum that was growing out of a deer truffle. The species T. longisegmentatum used to be considered a Cordyceps species not that long ago, and do have those habits.

 

• Jeremy's very beautiful cup fungi with water standing in it, now identified as genus Urnula

 

• Rose's hemlock varnish shelf with that orientation difference showing gravitropism. These shelf fungi changed their growing orientation in response to their log flipping. How did they know which way was up? Fungal capacity to sense & respond to gravity involves some really interesting, detailed, & likely varied biology on a cellular level

 

• Howard's thin walled maze polypore also showing gravitropism. This example is very pronounced.  

 

• Howard's ghost pipes, which are a plant, not a fungus, but which were spotted as we scrolled down the page, and it turns out ghost pipes have many fungal associations, particularly Russula species. As Rose let me know in a message, ghost pipes are, "parasites on fungus! More specifically, they are a mycoheterotroph. It is the Russula that have the mycorrhizal relationship with trees, then the ghost plants use the Russula (and Lactarius in some places) as their hosts. This is also why ghost plants are impossible to cultivate." 

 

• Rose's bog bells, or Bog Galerina, are little-researched & observed in part because fewer people venture into the thick of bogs, and in part simply being rare. They are assumed to be very poisonous, but that is only due to their relative, Galerina marginata's notorious deadly nature. Nobody (to our knowledge) has ever eaten a Bog Galerina to find out, or done a much-less-risky work up in the lab. 

 

• Jacki's not-a-puffball that was actually a really cool common stinkhorn 'witch's egg' with a squishy middle documented nicely.

 

• Kari's Orange Mycena that Leah recently researched to identify and learned how to use the map feature on that species' information page to narrow down and look at just how many have been observed in Wisconsin specifically.

 

• And Leah's dead man's fingers that lacks the white dusting seen in many specimens because she saw hers in its earlier sexual stage, that Rose helped her identify. But because Rose was joining the meeting by phone and looking at such a small screen, she's now having second thoughts. She now thinks that it may be something Tolypocladium instead.

If you like, head on over to these obervations to weigh-in with comments or ID suggestions of your own.
Even if something says "Research Grade" you are still free to disagree! Identifications on iNaturalist are never settled.