snug harbor's exploding with...fungal growths!

Mushrooms are everywhere, churning the soil
We'd all be buried in dead stuff if not for their toil
Some are bright purple and some look like coral -
Let's cook them in garlic and spices and oil!

Okay, maybe not that last bit - too many can kill you and anyway, as we all know, they should be left to do their mushroomy thing right where we spotted them. (LNT Principle #4: Leave what you find!)

There are an awful lot of incredibly cool mushrooms out there right now - a mushroom being, "an enlarged complex aboveground fleshy fruiting body of a fungus." Psssh, of course. One of my favorites is the weirdly purple Cortinarius violaceus, whose scientific name hints at its distinctive color. Alina, Erin, and I spotted a few of these on the horrendous portage between Duncan and Tobin; I've also seen them near Moskey Basin. This plump mushroom has a few honors under its belt: it was one of just a few fungal species that were personally named by Carl Linnaeus (father of taxonomy) himself, and it's also the darkest member of its genus. They are apparently edible, but as we said earlier - stop that! I'm swatting your hand away. Let it do its thing.

The coral fungi is another interesting group. For those of you interested in things like scientific taxonomy (hello, fellow nerds), the group that we commonly lump together with the term "coral fungus" actually spans several families and three different orders, so even though they all look similar they are NOT all very closely related. (Remember: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species; humans are in the order of Primates, along with things like gorillas and orangutans and lemurs.) We refer to things as a coral fungus when they have many closely clustered vertical branches, often found on decaying wood (which, to be honest, describes a great deal of other fungi as well.) Some of them are very brightly colored. Many of them are fleshy and edible (but not ours! hands off.) Most of ours here are white, tan, or pinkish.

Those of you out here, let me know what crazy fungi you've seen! Email photos to snugharborreporter@gmail.com.

So it's not only berries this time of year; in a different way, fungus is another fruit we have in August, part of the same 'burgeoning cornucopia" I mentioned last time.