2024 was a bittersweet year for me. Wonderful moments shared with my dog, friends & family and also sad times around the same. I would like to thank everyone for their empathy and wisdom: for being so kind to me throughout this thing called life – both friends and strangers alike. I am thankful and so very grateful to all who allowed me to grieve in my own way – being there when I needed company, understanding when I needed space and supporting me no matter what. I am so very lucky.

My travels into the forests in 2024 became focused on the amazing mushrooms who manage to find their way to the light even though the going is tough. Springing up from their mycelia, punching through obstacles in their path to emerge triumphant from the underground. I know mushrooms are teachers and I never felt it so much as I did in 2024.

I’m posting all my 2024 photos in this one post. Found From October – December on Mount Elphinstone, in Sprockets Park and on Soames Hill. Thank you to everyone Addie Fern and I met in the woods this year. It was wonderful exchanging information about locations where we found loads of lobsters (they seemed to be everywhere), chanties (so many, and until mid December!) and pines (two wonderful days of tripping over them on Elphie before the wind storms blew up, felling trees and making the trails impassable and unsafe). Thank you to my new city friends who came for their first time foraging.
It was a wonderful season for my beautiful Addie Fern and me. She and Meron are forever in my heart and forever racing through the forest.

So, let’s get to the photos of these wonderful beauties. I know you know who they are.

This is one happy polypore. Couldn’t resist it’s smile. A large Fomitopsis pinicola rockin’ on up Field Road.

I’m a happy polypore. What are you?

Raindrops keep falling off my lips and that makes me smile because I get live in the forests of Mount Elphinstone.

 

 

About Fomitopsis pinicola

Fomitopsis pinicola, is a stem decay fungus. Its conk (fruiting body), known as the Red-Belt Conk, is a polypore mushroom of the genus Fomitopsis. The species is common throughout the temperate Northern hemisphere. It is a decay fungus that serves as a small-scale disturbance agent in coastal rainforest ecosystems. It influences stand structure and succession in temperate rainforests. It performs essential nutrient cycling functions in forests.

Cap is hoof-shaped or triangular with a hard and tough texture. Its surface is more or less smooth, at first orange-yellow with a white margin, later dark reddish to brown and then frequently with orange margin. It grows as thick shelves on live and dead coniferous or (less common) deciduous trees.

The fruiting body of Fomitopsis pinicola is called the conk. It is a woody, pileate fruiting body with pores lined with basidia on its underside. As in other polypores, the fruiting body is perennial with a new layer of pores produced each year on the bottom of the old pores. The pores are whitish when young and become somewhat brownish in age. This mushroom is inedible due to its woody texture, but it is useful as tinder.

More information: Fomitopsis pinicola : wikipedia

What I love about the eastern forests, well one of many things, are the birch trees. Yeah, yeah, who doesn’t, I hear ya.

Found these tinder conks growing on some birches around the cottage. Good thing in case I ever go there in the winter and need to start a fire. The 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Iceman carried four pieces of F. fomentarius, concluded to be for use as tinder.

 

About The Tinder Conk ( Fomes fomentarius )

Fomes fomentarius (commonly known as the tinder fungus, false tinder fungus, hoof fungus, tinder conk, tinder polypore or ice man fungus) is a species of fungal plant pathogen found in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The species produces very large polypore fruit bodies which are shaped like a horse’s hoof and vary in colour from a silvery grey to almost black, though they are normally brown. It grows on the side of various species of tree, which it infects through broken bark, causing rot. The species typically continues to live on trees long after they have died, changing from a parasite to a decomposer.

Though inedible, F. fomentarius has traditionally seen use as the main ingredient of amadou, a material used primarily as tinder, but also used to make clothing and other items. The 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Iceman carried four pieces of F. fomentarius, concluded to be for use as tinder. It also has medicinal and other uses. The species is both a pest and useful in timber production.

More information: Fomes fomentarius: Wikipedia

You may be used to polypores where the gills are so tight that you must look really, really, really closely to see them. And then there are the open pore gill polypores, in this case Polyporus alveolaris. This was the first time McDowell came upon one and she loved the cool, hexagonal pores. Of course she did. What about mushrooms doesn’t McDowell love?

These hexies (rhymes with dexies) were found on sticks around the cottage and in the Ontario woods summer of 2015.

Do my pores look big on this stick?  McDowell thinks these polypores open gill pores are beautiful.

Texturized top of hexie-pored polypore.

 

So cool. Yes, I am looking into getting a life, thank you very much.

These polypores were small and everywhere in the forest.

 

About The Hexie-Pored Polypore  (Polyporus alveolaris)

Polyporus alveolaris, commonly known as the hexagonal-pored polypore, is a species of fungus in the genus Polyporus. It causes a white rot of dead hardwoods. Found on sticks and decaying logs, its distinguishing features are its yellowish to orange scaly cap, and the hexagonal or diamond-shaped pores. It is widely distributed in North America, and also found in Asia, Australia, and Europe.

The fruit bodies of P. alveolaris are rounded to kidney- or fan-shaped. Fruit bodies sometimes have stems, but they are also found attached directly to the growing surface. The cap surface is dry, covered with silk-like fibrils, and is an orange-yellow or reddish-orange color, which weathers to cream to white. Tubes are radially elongates. The pores are large—compared to other species in this genus—angular (diamond-shaped) or hexagonal; the pore surface is a white to buff color. The stipe, if present, is placed either laterally or centrally, and has a white to tan color. The pores extend decurrently on the stipe. Spore deposit is white.

More information: Polyporus alveolaris: Wikipedia