365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Tilachlidium Brachiatum
Day 57: When a Park colleague sent me her photos of a strange growth she had discovered on the cut end of a trailside log and said, "Crow, do you have any idea what this is?" I was frankly baffled. I could tell it was fungal, but it was entirely unlike anything I'd ever seen. I misread her instructions or locating it and made two trips on the wrong trail before finally asking her to accompany me to the site, but when we got there, I was no more certain of its nature than I'd been before. The specimens taken by the Park's Plant Ecologist were too dry to examine (she was also baffled), so I took a fresh sample to put under the microscope. When I did so, I found that the thready bits were in fact growing on a gilled structure which I believed to be Angel Wings (Pleurocybella porrigens). The threads were an overgrowth. Armed with that clue (despite it being a very small one), I was eventually able to find information which led to its identification as Tilachlidium brachiatum. My photos of the fungus in situ became the first in the Burke Herbarium's photo gallery. A few days ago, I revisited the site and took this photo. Obviously, "Tilly" has not taken any hurt from cold or damp and is, if anything, doing even better. However, a concerted grid search of a 100-foot radius of her log revealed no other examples of the fungus despite the fact that it is known to occur on a wide variety of shelf-fungus hosts, many of which were present in the area. Tilly is on our 2020 watchlist, for sure.
Labels:
fungal overgrowth,
Tilachlidium brachiatum,
Tilly
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