Mushroom Exploring in the Cumberland Community Forest

 By Keith and Heather Nicol

      On Friday, October 16 we joined several other nature enthusiasts at the Japanese walking trail near Cumberland to do some mushroom hunting.  In this Covid 19 era we are looking at all kinds of new and different ways to explore outside and so when cross country ski buddy Bruce Moffat suggested a mushroom photography session in the Cumberland Community Forest we were certainly interested in it. “And it might add to a current inaturalist project that is going on related to mushrooms and lichens. It is called the Cumberland Forest 2020 Fungus Fest Blitz and it is running from Oct 1 -31, 2020. “ he told us in an email.

 

                                  We found our first mushrooms just a few feet from where we parked our car      

    When we went on line to the project web site- https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/cumberland-forest-2020-fungus-fest-blitz  we were blown away with all the different mushrooms that had been spotted thus far.  Since we know nothing about mushrooms so we thought this would be a good way to learn.   We spent about 2 hours checking out the area between the Japanese walking trail and Jumbo’s Cabin and found a variety of mushrooms to photograph. If you decide to join the effort it makes sense to gear up appropriately. We brought rubber boots (since it had rained earlier in the day) and rain pants plus something to kneel on. This is important since to get some good pictures you want to get down to mushroom level which usually means on the ground. And who wants to kneel on wet vegetation so bring some sort of kneeling pads as well as rain pants. We also brought a tripod since the light levels in the forest on an overcast day are so low you need a very slow shutter speed to take acceptable pictures. 

 

                                              We were really taken with these mini mushrooms growing out of a fir cone   

    Perhaps our most interesting mushrooms were tiny mushrooms poking out of a fallen fir cone. I don’t think we had ever seen that before. There were also some colourful Amanita mushrooms along the trail and some colourful Pinewood Gingertail mushrooms as well. The nice thing about inaturalist is that once you upload your image the data base it gives you some good guesses as to what it is that you have photographed. Inaturalist is a free web site (https://inaturalist.ca/home) which is worthwhile knowing about if you want to learn more about our natural world. Also other “experts” may also have a look at your image and add their thoughts as well. So if you feel like getting out and having a walk this fall think about checking out the above web site and add to the Cumberland Fungus Fest Blitz data base. 

 

This "Amanita" mushroom was one of the most colourful that we found