UW Campus 5/8/12

For our class period today we met in Mary Gates Hall and were greeted by a mycologist working at UW. His assistant and himself split the class into two groups and we explored the campus looking for various fungi. We began by heading to a woodchip area across the street from the Architecture building. The area was covered with woodchips and had a few large cedars around it. Also, there were some shrubs lining the clearing. We looked at the characteristics of mushrooms, specifically their hyphae and gills. The woodchip area was dominated by one type of mushroom, agrocybe praecox. This particular mushroom was a light to medium brown color and there were various aged specimens in the area. The older ones were cracking and darker colored. The spore print is a dark brown color. After checking out this area, we continued to an area around the UW farm. We observed a turkey tail mushroom growing on a dead log and also saw a button mushroom growing on the compost pile.In addition, we found an oyster mushroom growing on another dead piece of woody material. On this trip we were able to observe various whiterot mushrooms. I enjoyed this class period because fungi is a group I know little about and I find quite interesting.

Posted on May 31, 2012 01:10 AM by twitwer