These posts are not for foraging. They are intended for entertainment and intellectual satisfaction only. These posts are not a field guide nor comprehensive in any way - their accuracy is not assured in any way. Do not eat wild mushrooms unless you are a professional, have substantial professional assistance or have a wealth of personal experience with a specific species. Do not make any foraging decisions based on these posts. To do so could be dangerous or life threatening.

This post makes no reference to edibility or toxicity

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The mushrooms pictured in these posts are real weirdos.

Something is...wrong with them...and I don't know exactly what it is, though I have my theories.

These guys were all growing on several trees in my neighborhood. What's interesting - one of several interesting things - is that two of those trees were over half a mile apart from one another. Both were street trees living in their own deserted plots of dirt, and yet both were suffering from the same, potentially devastating, affliction.

I should say at this point that discovering these butt rot fungi, whatever their actual species, on these trees is a major blow for me. One of the trees must be nearly a hundred years old, possibly older. An oak, planted generations ago, that has seen the city develop around it. It stands quite majestically outside my apartment building and provides the most beautiful shade and coverage from rain on our narrow, one way street.

In recent months, I have become the grim reaper of local city trees. So far, and I am not proud of this, although I believe it was the right choice, I have been responsible for 311 calls which resulted in the removal of four different old growth trees in NYC. Each tree manifested a wide variety of either visible structural damage, or intensive fungal infection which implied a lack of overall health.

Now, I did not call 311 and say "Chop down these trees immediately!". I simply called and indicated a dead bough here, or a fungus there. I figured, at least for a couple of the trees, that there would some ameliorative action that could be taken, perhaps partial cutback or fungal treatments. But in each case, the tree was there one day, and gone the next.

To be fair, the stumps revealed a great deal of invisible damage, and I like to think, in the windy days since, that I may have saved a pedestrian or a car from falling limbs.

But, it still pains me to see them go. And it would so pain me to see this one go, that I can't bring myself to make the call.

Let's take a closer look at the dastardly tree killer.

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This unfortunately large cluster never really got off its feet.

Actually, none of the specimens featured here managed to mature. They all died well before that point, likely as a result of dog piss or the cold. Or any number of other possible hazards that might accost a mushroom in an urban environment.

Despite being stalled mid development, it's clear that whatever this fungal infection is, it is pretty advanced, and pretty eager to spread. This cluster of potential caps could have been a hundred strong had circumstances allowed it!

The entire bundle tore away in mostly a single mass, which I split into pieces for a closer look.

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The cross section shows all of the caps forming from a shared sterile base.

The flesh of the base in whitish, but this older piece is also browning. The somewhat developed caps are bright yellow almost all around, while the tiny ones in the rear have begun to brown. The entire cluster, above, was a few inches in diameter, and the largest of the caps on it were a couple of cm in height.

You can see the hint of various dirt and detritus int his sample strewn about the surface. God only knows what was on these mushrooms, which makes it all the more impressive that they got to the point that they did even.

Other clusters were also present, and they revealed something even stranger.

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What the actual f#@K?

This is positively odd. Clearly we're look at a much older fruiting body - I believe of the same species since it was growing from the same tree where other clusters were growing and has some shared traits - internal white flesh, a textured cap, coming from a larger sterile mass.

But, obviously, these are also absolutely bizarre in their differences. Primarily, the bulbous stem, so thick and wide that both have cracked at the seams! Moreover the fruiting body on the top of the picture seems to have smoothly lost it's "cap", sort of like the smooth nubbin on the end of the Tulostoma lloydii I found once upon a time.

But this is not T.lloydii. This is not a puffball of any kind.

You can see in the photo to the left the halved sterile base of a slightly newer cluster of this mushroom - these clearly grow in large groups or florets and the flesh is white and undifferentiated in the base.

But it is also white and undifferentiated, even in the clearly older and much grosser abnormal specimen.

This mushroom appears to have a variety of morphological issues in that the caps never seem to properly develop. Instead the stem takes over development and grows almost out of control. These things remind me of the horrible out of control growth of Tetsuo in Akira.

It might have been plausible that these were simply a non-gilled species that developed and deployed their spores in a different way. But a closer look belies this possibility.

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Tiny gills covered in a veil!

Here we have one of the largest specimens to come out of any of these clusters. You can see that the stem has once again grown way out of proportion to the cap and gills. However, unlike the other caps, this particular specimen has made a rudimentary effort. The gills were tiny and decurrent. They were also covered in a partial veil which began to break away.

It seems very unlikely indeed that this is the intended morphology of these mushrooms. It would be a gigantic amount of resources to waste on sterile stem material in lieu of actually productive spore producing surfaces. When I halved this stem, it was also undifferentiated, sterile white flesh throughout. There is some reticulation along the stem, but nothing floccose or straight of hairy.

Let's take a look at the cap and KOH reaction

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Even on the smaller caps there is a kind of reptilian scalyness.

You can see that here to an extent. The caps are definitely textured, though not with thick hairs or scales, more like the outline of scales. A drop of KOH on the cap surfaces is browning.

Conclusions

Given the fact that these are likely saprobic or parasitic in nature, growing from an oak tree in a position that suggest butt rot, I have to guess that they are part of the very wide genus Armillaria. Armillaria is both a genus of mushrooms, containing many species, and sometimes referred to as a complex of mushrooms. There is the Armillaria mellea complex - the "Honey Mushrooms", while others group the genus as a whole by the name Armillariella, although this seems less common.

Given the yellow, clustering, butt rot growth on a living tree, something in this complex/genus makes sense. Since there is a veil covering the rudimentary gills, we can then go on to say that this is probably in the A.mellea complex - the wide range of individual species which might be grouped in "Honey Mushrooms."

Another possibility I considered is that this was some sort of Pholiota species, possibly Pholiota multiflora. However Pholiota's are usually not parasitic, they appear to be pure saprobes and grow on already decomposing wood. This is not totally inconceivable, it could be that a portion of the butt has straight up died, but it's pretty unlikely.

No matter which species this is, it did not come to full maturation, which is good for the community of trees, as no or few spores would have been transmitted into the air. It's a little annoying for me as I was not able to take a print or collect useful microscopic information from the immature gills I found.

The takeaway is this - these are likely Armillaria mushrooms - the kind that parasitizes and eventually kills a wide variety of trees. This bodes, in the mid-term, poorly for the trees on which I found these mushrooms. Along with various polypores, primarily Ganodermas, Armillaria mushrooms can be a real tree killer. And, like Ganodermas, once you see the fruiting bodies, it usually means the invading mycelium has spread fairly completely.

For the land owner, or urban street walker, keep an eye out for this and other tree growing fungi. If you are a member of the public, you can call your municipality who can send out tree specialists, but just know that could be a death sentence for the tree. If you're a land owner and see this on one of your trees, definitely call a tree specialist as the best way to save your other trees might be to treat, or cull, the infected one.

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Photos And Videos Are My Own:

Microscopic photos were taken using an AmScope SM-4TZ-144A dissecting microscope and an AMScope M150B entry level microscope. The camera lens is also AMScope, MU300.

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Information Sources

The bulk of the information in this case was derived from a multi-part posting of these photos and the circumstances of their being taken on several forums involving the study of Fungi and Slime Molds. The information was shared on The Slime Mold Collective, The NYMS Facebook page, and the subreddits /r/mycology and /r/slimemolds. Users from the slime mold collective and reddit both expressed doubt that this was a slime mold and was in fact a fungal mold.

Efforts were made to identify the species using the following resources:

[1]Kuo, M. (2017, May). Armillaria mellea. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com

[2]Wikipedia on A.mellea

[3]First nature on A.mellea

[4]Kuo, M. (2017, May). Armillaria tabescens. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com

[5]First Nature on A.tabescens

[6]The Audubon Society Field Guide To North American Mushrooms by Gary Lincoff, p.736, Honey Mushrooms.

[7]Mushrooms of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada by Timothy J Baroni, p.287, Pholiota multifolia

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