SVIMS second foray of the spring season took place on Sunday, April 12, 2025, at John Dean CRD park. Since this venue was a regional park, the out-and-back walk was a look-but-don’t- collect venture. The walk was organized by Mel Hesz and Ann McCall. Kem Luther and Andy MacKinnon were walk leaders. Foray coordinators Ian and Tina Brown did the check-in, check-out (and managed not to lose anyone!).
Over the course of the morning, the 30 participants, several of them first-timers on a SVIMS foray, found 30 different species of fungi. The results were recorded in iNaturalist. The western Trillium was out, blooming and glorious.
Several of the finds are pictured in this post. (Click on the pictures to go to the corresponding iNaturalist pages). Almost as soon as the walk began, one of the foray participants spotted a clump of an ascomycete club, common cudonia. It responded when warmed with a puff of ascospores.
Two different kinds of earth-tongues were found growing only a few metres from each other: the narrow and pointed black earth-tongue and the broad and densely hirsute heads of hairy earth-tongue. Tiny cups of Ciboria rufofusca speckled the surfaces of two different Doug-fir cones. The largest “typical” mushroom of the day was the spring Nolanea holoconiota–it stood some 15 cm above the forest floor.
