It’s mushroom season!!!
Fall is almost here which means it’s time for mushrooms!!! Mushrooms come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours and you can’t help but appreciate their diversity while hiking through the Alps this time of year.
A mushroom is actually the fruit of a much bigger fungus growing under the ground. Only when the circumstances are just right (think of humidity & temperature for example) mushrooms pop up. The purpose of a mushroom is to drop millions of minuscule spores into the air, so the wind can spread them. After the spores land on the ground, they start forming new fungi.
Below you’ll find 5 easy to recognize species you can see on the Tour du Mont Blanc. It’s a very divers list showing you some of the incredible features of mushrooms.
Fly agaric – poisonous or hallucinogenic?
The fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) is one of the most recognisable toadstools growing in our forests. Some say eating the mushroom can have a hallucinogenic effect, but you are more likely to get sick. Either way, I think it’s incredibly pretty!
(Pictured above as the featured image. Photos by Simone van Velzen.)
Shaggy ink cap – a melting mushroom
This shaggy ink cap (Coprinus comatus) looks like it’s melting. Ink caps autodigest their gills in order to release their spores. In other words, the mushroom liquifies itself. It creates a black ink-like liquid that oozes of the mushroom’s cap until eventually only a melting mass of black goo is left.
Yellow staghorn – little rays of sunshine
On a rainy fall day, the bright yellow stagshorn (Calocera viscosa) might remind us of little rays of sunshine on the forest floor. Its striking colour really makes it stands out in its habitat, because it grows on dead conifer wood which generally isn’t a very colourful environment. Yellow stagshorns might pop up year-round, but are most common in the fall.
Chanterelle – picking edible mushrooms
Chanterelles (Cantharellus) are among the most popular of wild edible mushrooms. I picked and ate the one in the picture (delicious!), but I stopped picking mushrooms a while age. In the Alps, picking mushrooms is becoming more and more popular and this puts lots of pressure on easy to recognise species like chanterelles while fungi play an unimaginable important role in our ecosystems. Chanterelles for example are mycorrhizal fungi and form important symbiotic relationships with plants.
Elf cup – A spring mushroom
Fungi don’t only fruit in the fall, for some species spring offers the exact right conditions. This elf cup (Sarcoscypha) grows on dead wood and pops up in early spring just after the snow melts. First, I thought I spotted a piece of rubbish on the forest floor, but then I realized it was a tiny brightly coloured fungus! This colourful specimen was about the size of my fingernail.
Read more about plants in the Alps
https://alpenwild.com/Alpshiking/?p=1030
https://alpenwild.com/Alpshiking/?p=867
If you step into the natural world with Simone, her passion for all living things—wild flowers to lichen, birds to mammals—can’t help but rub off on you. She’s excited to meet you on your Tour du Mont Blanc and share the amazing natural wonders in the Alps.
- The Alps: A Biodiversity Treasure Trove - December 10, 2020
- Flora in the Alps – Spotlight on the Alpenrose - June 25, 2020
- Tour du Mont Blanc Hightlight: The Contamines-Montjoie Nature Reserve - May 21, 2020