This report by Alison M. was distributed to the Botany Group by Jocie on March 4. Click a photo to enlarge it.
On February 11 we walked down the south side of the Puntledge River from the dam. Too early yet for the sweet gale (Myrica gale), though it is in bud. The evergreen Rhododendron groenlandicum (photo 1) and Kalmia microphylla both had buds, but the rhododendron leaves were still firmly pointing downwards in the cold – perhaps expecting the snow we have just received!
Of fungi there were quite a few of those you [the Botany Group] have already found in other locations (the little pink Scytinotus longinquus on dead alder seems to be everywhere!). Photo 2 shows the cut end of a dead conifer trunk with a little garden of fresh Dacrymyces chrysospermus (witch’s butter), plus old Trichaptum abietinum, its usual pink cap well covered in green algae and a couple of Fomitopsis mounceae.
More unusual was the splendid example of Mucronella pendula (photos 3 & 4), sometimes called white icicle. The dead red cedar leaflet gives a sense of how small it is.
Along the side of another dead conifer we found a large specimen of not quite fully developed Pycnoporellus alboluteus, which is a spongy polypore and can look like a clump of stalactites when older (photos 5 and not well-focussed 6). This specimen had a fair amount of red – it is often more of a dingy orange and beige. It tends to be found underneath logs, in spring as the snow recedes.
