One of the most astonishing discoveries we ever made while mushrooming was this polypore - what can I call it? Condominium? - on a tall Western Red Cedar snag on Mt. Hood several years ago. Even though we showed the photos to several very knowledgeable mycologists, we were never able to identify it precisely, but this never bothered us much. The fact was that it was by far the most impressive polypore - what? Colonization? - we ever saw and ever expect to see.
The fact that I am at a loss for words to describe this incredible fungus (a rare occurrence for me!) is a measure of how impressive it was. But I somehow found words not long after we discovered it on the west (wet) side of Mt. Hood in 2007.
Our conk condo as we discovered it in 2007.
Mary and I have produced our own Christmas cards for many years. They always consist of a photo I've taken, together with a rhyme (some of our friends call them poems, but they are always couplets, the only type of poetry I seem able to produce). The rhymes attempt to tie the photo to the holidays in some way, sometimes more successfully than others. Our cards have had a wide variety of subjects, including blacktail deer, Icelandic icebergs, a chipmunk eating a peanut offered him by a Santa impersonator (me), a red-shafted flicker picking overripe elderberries, a huge flock of Kenyan flamingoes, a lovely little water ouzel, some very handsome darlingtonias, a praying mantis, crab boats from Port Orford and one of Mt. Hood itself, complete with triple cloud cap. In 2007, the polypore condo simply had to be the subject, and here is the photo, followed by the rhyme.
The photograph that accompanied our Christmas card.
One holiday guest you don’t want to see
is this polypore - that is, if you’re a tree!
It shows up, perhaps, as a single spore,
finds a weak point and slam! It’s in the door!
Quickly taking up residence, multiplying,
until there’s a condo - a city! - of them, trying -
And succeeding - to colonize the whole darned tree!
With round-the-clock wood meals served, for free!
Oh, sure, it’s quiet, never makes a fuss,
but just between the tree and us,
Behind that improbable, innocent face,
it’s munching away (though at a snail’s pace).
The polypore won’t leave; it hangs around,
until its host falls, depleted, to the ground,
Then, work done, the polypore’s time has passed,
although each year its spores were cast
And flew far and wide, carried by a breeze,
off to find other tired, old trees.
But cheer up! Though this story may seem sad,
it’s nature’s way, and thus not a bad
Thing but a good one. In its way, it’s a story
of renewal, how the forest in its glory
Renews itself with help from the polypore,
recycling nutrients all trees store,
Thus helping next year’s trees to thrive,
and making us all glad to be alive!
Hoping you enjoy all of your holiday guests,
Steve and Mary Taylor, 2007
Well, when I wrote that, I thought it would be many, many years before that snag, and its polypores, ever fell to earth. Indeed, I doubted we'd live to see it. Every year, we went to visit it, and hunt mushrooms nearby (there is a fallen hemlock up the road that reliably produces a very nice specimen of Coral Hydnum for us!), and every year we would marvel that there seemed to be no change; our marvelous old snag with its marvelous colony of polypores, always the same, year after year.
For us, this has been a lousy year for mushrooms thus far. So, the morning of November 1, 2012, we headed out on our foray with scant optimism... more like grim determination. We sometimes find cauliflower mushrooms - our very favorite - on the long road up to our polypore condo, and our mushroom "radar" was turned up to maximum gain all the way, but we saw no cauliflowers or much of anything else. We noted with disappointment that a wooden Forest Service bridge over the nearby creek had been closed and barricaded, and feel certain that the Forest Service will never fix it - the "we have no money" mantra being pretty well perfected by now (although we notice with dismay that they always seem to have money for some far less essential purposes). Then, we crested a rise in the road, and stopped dead in our tracks.
The snag had fallen across the road. Half had been removed to allow passage; the rest remained. And the remnants of our polypore peeked out from under the crumbled cedar. In another year, it probably won't be recognizable.
Our beloved conk condo tree has fallen.
My rhyme proved accurate, prescient. I knew it would be, but I didn't know it would happen so soon. It was shocking, really, and very sad... we never really expected to see its fall. We'll never see its kind again.