LawrenceLawrence MillmanMillman Plectania melastoma.

uring a recent mycological trip and having a pileus that alternates localities in the country where it had to Slovakia, the southern part bands of color, with one of those been documented. of the former Czechoslovakia, colors often a deep red. A word about the Red Listing of DI didn’t hear any of the dour-faced During the day, we’d been looking fungi: although a project is in the binomial bashing that I so often hear for another lamellate polypore, works to get threatened fungi Red in my own country. Instead, I heard warnieri. This fruits in the fall, Listed globally, rare or uncommon remarks like the but doesn’t sporulate fungi are now only protected by following: until the spring. country. For example, 35% of all fungi “We need to In Slovakia, it has have been placed on Germany’s Red be drinking when Although a project been found only List, and several hundred species we’re identifying once, on a have been similarly designated in fungi. Otherwise, is in the works to get tree growing on the Slovakia. In the USA, however, how could we threatened fungi Red floodplain. only two lichens and one fungal come up with any On that floodplain, species have been Red Listed. Call it new species?” Listed globally, rare or I’d examined every zoocentricism, call it mycophobia, or The speaker willow in sight, call it the American Way. Perhaps call of these words uncommon fungi are occasionally sinking it a melange of all three… was Ivona now only protected several inches into This was early April, a period when Kautmanova, an riparian muck, but unusual ascos fruit in Slovakia, so expert mycologist by country. no Lenzites. the next day I went to a piney sand based in Bratislava, Lenzites warnieri plain northeast of Bratislava with the country’s capital. is on the Red List of Ivona, her husband Vaclav, and an We were drinking Slovakian fungi, and while ascomycete specialist named Milan. apricot schnapps and Ivona and I didn’t find it, we Milan had found several species looking at what turned out did find another Red Listed at this site that hadn’t been found to be Daedaleopsis tricolor. It species, Myriostoma coliforme. elsewhere in Slovakia. wasn’t the schnapps that gave us this This odd earthstar has pore mouths Almost as soon as we got out of the name, however. Daedaleopsis tricolor all over its exoperidium… hence its car, I noticed that lots of trees had been is a European species that differs from species name (myriostoma means recently cut. Ivona told me that such D. confragosa in being more lamellate “many mouths”). There were only a few cutting was illegal. When I asked her 10 FUNGI Volume 8:2 Summer 2015 why the forestry people didn’t punish body of Sclerotinia (=Dumontinia) locale—according to Milan—was the the felons, she told me that the forestry tuberosa. The common name only one in the country where it had people were the felons. of this discomycete, “anemone been documented. In being Red Listed, “Maybe all this cutting will aid cup,” indicates that it resembles it can’t be collected without a permit. biodiversity,” I said, trying to look on an anemone arising from a black “What would happen to someone the bright side. After all, there are sclerotium. Specimens typically who collected it without a permit?” I more species of fungi in a disturbed have a thin meandering that’s asked Ivona. forest than in a primary forest. well-nigh invisible… except to the “They would be fined 100 euros,” “Ah, biodiversity,” Milan remarked. harrowed sclerotia and individuals she said. Then she asked me about the “You Americans love it so much that like Vaclav. I’ve found this species on penalty for collecting Red Listed fungi you would even bring Ebola into your anemones in the wild, but never on in my country. country just to improve the biodiversity.” anemones in gardens. There would be no penalty, I told This jocular observation raised an We didn’t find any fleshy fungi, her, because there’s no Red Listing … as-yet unanswered question about but my companions did tell me about yet. I added that if, on the other hand, the Red Listing of fungi: if a species one, Tylopilus felleus (aka, the “bitter a person was caught with a collection is at once uncommon and a serious bolete”), that made an excellent basket full of spotted owls, he/she pathogen, should it be Red Listed? Or libation when dried and put into would be penalized, perhaps severely. might we assume that an uncommon vodka for several weeks. They said that Toward the end of the day, a man species doesn’t do much damage the vodka becomes slightly, but not whose rigging was a bit disheveled precisely because it’s uncommon? unpleasantly bitter. I made a point to joined us. He turned out to be a Soon I began finding Discinas make this drink later in the year, when local farmer. When he learned that everywhere. Maybe they were T. felleus fruits with reckless abandon we were mycologists, he removed Discina perlata, but maybe they in my neck of the woods. a specimen from his pocket and were not—European species are For years, I’d been looking for the showed it to us. “Could you look at not always the same as their North discomycete Plectania melastoma. this huba [mushroom]?” he said. American lookalikes, and vice-versa. Looked in North America, in Europe, “I found it recently, and I think it’s I did collect a few of those Discinas in Iceland, but I’d never found it. Coltricia perennis.” and later I put them under the We were studying the piney debris We looked at the specimen. It was microscope, but they turned out to be at the edge of the forest when I indeed a Coltricia perennis. too immature to have . suddenly shouted: “Holy shit!” For That evening we celebrated a Vaclav was an entomologist, and directly in front of me was a large successful foray with the usual like quite a few entomologists of my cluster of P. melastoma. The species is schnapps as well as some Slivovitz acquaintance, he had exceptionally unmistakable—it has a blackish-brown and Fernet Branca. Truth to tell, I did sharp eyes. He pointed to something cup encrusted with orangish-red not come up with a new name for that I didn’t see. He pointed again, granules and a slightly toothed margin. anything we had collected. Rather, I and I didn’t see it again. At last Here I should add that P. melastoma raised my glass and toasted Slovakia, he touched the specimen he was is another species on the Slovakian its spring ascos, and its mycologically- pointing at, and I saw a fruiting fungal Red List, and that this particular aware farmers.

Daedaleopsis tricolor.

Myriostoma coliforme.

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