A Kink In Its Tail

Day 242: One of the distinguishing features of Myriosclerotinia caricis-ampullaceae is a kink in the end of the stipe, and the stipe's termination in a "button" of tissue called the "sclerotium." The sclerotium anchors the fungus to its host sedge at a leaf axil. While neither the kink nor the sclerotium is visible in this photo, the curled stipe demonstrates the struggle this fungus puts up to reach the surface through a dense bed of sedge foliage. Myrio likes to keep his feet wet...not just damp, mind you, but wet...and emerges just as the snow pulls back, so field research can be a chilling proposition. Amid voluble cursing on the lines of, "Oh, damn, that's cold!" (rendered somewhat more family-friendly than the actual vocabulary), Joe and I waded barefoot into the fray hunting for exceptionally large specimens (size also confirms the identity of this rarity). In the process, we made a discovery: when the sedge dies and begins to decay, Myrio drifts free, allowing its fruiting bodies and their spores to move downrange. Our main site presents an opportunity to study the fungus' rate of spread and its effects on our native sedge population. Since this site was unknown in 1941 when Myrio was first discovered in the Park, we hope to establish a baseline for the next generation of researchers.