Just when we think we’ve seen and heard it all, someone throws us a roundhouse curve. In the January-February issue of MushRumors, the bi-monthly newsletter of the Oregon Mycological Society, comes a report, originally reported by Paul Fattig in the Medford Mail Tribune, of the discovery of a gilled mushroom that grows underwater!
The upper Rogue is a wonderous site!
They were discovered growing in knee-deep summer waters of the upper Rogue River, and were present at least from early July to late September. They were found in more than one location, in flowing water, and were not mushrooms that had been submerged by rising water of a fall into the river from above; they had grown that way!
They are described as being about 10 cm (4”) tall and 2 cm (less than an inch) across, with slender stems and a small, bell shaped cap with very visible gills. They are the only known gilled mushroom that grows underwater. They have been named Psathyrella aquatica and were introduced to the broader scientific community in a 14 page paper submitted in November to the science journal Mycologia by hydrologist Robert Coffan, who discovered them, and by Darlene Southworth, a retired Southern Oregon University biology professor, as well as Jonathan Frank, a lab technician at SOU.
Just when we were feeling pretty smug that the underwater mushroom found merrily growing in the Rogue River was an astounding story, never to be topped in the annals of mycological science, came an article from the March-April, 2007 issue of the Oregon Mycological Society’s excellent newsletter, MushRumors, in which Nick Iadanza enlightens us on a number of odd mushroom habitats, including sap, inside hollow trees, on animal remains and dung, and, yes, underwater. To quote:
An array of macrofungi exists that has evolved mechanisms for colonizing submerged or periodically submerged plant litter and wood. In moderately fast flowing streams Vibrissea truncorum will grow on submerged wood, while Cudonniella species grow on submerged leaf and woody liter in stagnant water. Mitrula grows in still water is bogs, forest pools, and ephemeral ponds. Many smaller mushrooms in the genera Mycena, Resinomycena, Hemimycena, Coprinus, and Mirasmius occur on sedges, rushes, cattails and grasses that may be submerged annually. Hypholoma, Galerina, Stagnicola and Mythicomyces all inhabit the bottoms of ephemeral forest pools, fruiting after they drain.
A number of the members of the Oregon Mycological Society, and its neighbor to the North, the Puget Sound Mycological Society, are far more technically knowledgeable that we can ever hope to be about such matters. For us, it is simply enough to marvel at the diversity and adaptability of the fungal world, when we encounter examples like this of highly specialized mushrooms that have evolved to fill a very specialized, unique niche in the natural world.
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