Demystifying the Orange Fungus Commonly Found on Tree Stumps

Exploring Nature in New Hampshire

It was supposed to rain and storm more last Saturday, so I didn’t want to go exploring any mountain tops. No, I went to Keene’s Beaver Brook Natural Area instead. I knew there would be lots of cool things to see there.

Beaver Brook itself was high. Over the next few days, hurricane Henri is expected to hit. I was hoping that the water levels would drop, but there is nowhere for the water to go because it rained so much in July. An old man I met up here once told me he had seen the water rise over the road many years ago. I hope I never see that happen. Keene would be in real trouble if this brook got that high now.

NOTE: Henri came and went while I was writing this post. It rained, but thankfully there wasn’t any major flooding in this area.

I thought I might see blue-stemmed goldenrod (Solidago caesia) in bloom, but it looks like I’ll have to wait a while. Its stems normally grow straight up until the flowers open, at which point they fall over and lie flat, but these had already done that. Its yellow blooms grow in tufts all along the stem so it’s an unusual goldenrod. It isn’t considered rare but I know of only one or two places where it grows. It is also called wreath goldenrod.

There are also lots of white wood asters (Aster divaricatus) here. They’re pretty common now, but they don’t bloom until August, so by the time the first frost comes, most of them are dead.

Along the old road, there is also a lot of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) growing here. Most of the plants were in full bloom. This plant had flowers in pairs, which I don’t usually see.

This one had its legs crossed, and that’s something I’ve never seen before. How strange. It’s as if it wanted to close off the access to its nectar. This plant usually blooms until it freezes, but as the days get shorter, the flowers will get smaller, close up, and lack petals and nectar. They self-pollinate and their sole purpose is to produce plenty of seeds.

It’s called Porpidia albocaerulescens and it’s one of the most beautiful lichens I’ve ever seen. It does well here on the ledges. The golden body (thallus) and the beautiful blue or turquoise apothecia that make spores stand out very much. But light is the only thing that can make them blue. The waxy coating on the apothecia makes light bounce off of it. Come here when the lichen is in the shade and they’ll be a smoky gray.

This is why I don’t go to these ledges as often to look at the lichens and mosses that grow there as I used to. This ledge collapsed a couple of years ago but more stone has fallen since. The trees above are being undercut now so they’ll fall one day as well. As you walk along this old road, if you look closely, you’ll see seams of broken and crumbling feldspar stone running through the ledge faces. I stay away from them now for the most part. Any fallen stone in this photo is easily big enough to crush a person. It must have been a mighty roar.

I wanted to take a picture of the frost crack on the golden birch tree that lives next to the brook because it’s one of the best ones I’ve seen. To my surprise, the place I used to stand to take pictures of it is now in the brook. I was on the edge of the water when I took this picture. Frost cracks happen when the sun warms the tree and the cells just under the bark expand. If it is cold enough at night, the bark will cool and shrink much faster than the wood below. This can cause the bark to crack through stress. I like this one because the tree bark and the crack that is healing are different colors. This really stands out, and if you’re trying to explain frost cracks, that’s what you want.

I tried not to look down while holding on to a tree with one arm and taking pictures of the frost crack with the other, but I couldn’t help it.

While most other maples have dropped their seeds, mountain maple seeds (Acer spicatum) haven’t ripened yet. I’ve only seen these trees here and another place. There are a lot of them here. At a glance the big leaves look much like striped maple leaves (Acer pensylvanicum. ).

The sky was all sun and clouds and it was beautiful here. I always find it funny that there are still no passing lines on the used-to-be-road, since time is the only thing that is moving here now. To think my father and I used to drive through here when I was a boy. The trees and weeds weren’t quite that close to the road at that time, though, so it must have looked like a much wider path. I can’t really remember much about it. Some say the road was closed when Route 9 was built in the 1960s, while others say it was in the early 1970s. I’ve never been able to get a solid date, not even from the highway department.

I finally got a picture of the big leaf aster’s leaves and flowers together. For this picture, you need to know a bit about depth of field because the flower stalks are about 2 feet above the leaves. More and more, I can see that these flowers are purple. A few years ago, I saw almost all of them white.

I don’t see as many blackberries as I used to, and the ones I do see look smaller. This one looked more like a black raspberry though the canes I saw certainly were blackberry. In a tangle like this maybe there was a cane or two of black raspberry here. Maybe the birds are getting to the berries before I see them.

I think I saw hoverflies all over a white avens (Geum canadense) flower today. That was the strangest thing I saw here. Wikipedia says these little flies are also known as flower flies, and many species’ adults eat nectar and pollen. They looked to be going for the anthers, which would mean pollen.

This pretty view reminded me of my father, who loved to fish for brook trout. He tried to get me interested, but as a kid I was more interested in exploring the woods than fishing. I don’t think we went on too many fishing trips together before he learned that he could either fish or chase me. At least, not at the same time. Still, it worked out. I got to walk around in the woods closer to home, and he was able to fish without any problems.

Orange crust fungus (Stereum complicatum) covered a log. It’s a beautiful fungus that is bright enough to be seen from quite a distance. It loves moisture but dries out within a day or two after a rain.

Artist’s conks (Ganoderma applanatum) grew on another log. This bracket fungus gets its name from its smooth white underside, which is perfect for drawing on. Any scratch made on the pure white surface becomes brown and will last for many years. I drew a farm scene on one a long time ago and I still have it. Artist’s conks are perennial fungi that get bigger each year. Older examples can be up to two feet across but these were young and not very big.

The eyelash fungi (Scutellinia scutellata) grew on a rotting birch log that was drenched in rain. They like it when the wood is wet like that. This fungus gets its common name from the eyelash like hairs that grow around its rim. They can be hard to see so you have to look closely. Molly eye-winker is another name for this type of eyelash because the “lashes” sometimes curl in toward the middle, as you can see in the picture to the right of the biggest one. As fungi go, they are quite small. None of these examples had reached pea size.

I thought these Arisaema triphyllum (Jack in the pulpit) berries were bright red from the road, but when I got closer, I saw they weren’t ripe yet. That’s what it’s like to be colorblind, but it didn’t bother me because these berries led me to the log with the eyelash fungi on it. They’re so small I never would have seen them from the road.

The berries of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) weren’t ripe yet either. Because they go away so quickly once they turn fully red, you don’t see many ripe ones on this blog. I’ve heard they taste like treacle but I’ve never tried them. Actually I’ve never tasted treacle either, which in this country is called blackstrap molasses.

The open space over the road gets the most sun, so all the plants and trees are pointing that way. It doesn’t help that they also grow on hillsides as well along much of the roadway. That’s why I see fallen trees almost every time I come here. They often fall on the electric lines that you might have seen in some of these photos.

I finally got to Beaver Brook Falls, but I didn’t dare go down the steep, slick bank, so I can only show you a side view. I say “finally” made it because the hike from the trailhead to the falls is only 7 tenths of a mile, but it takes me two hours or more every time because there is so much nature in such a small area. There is no better place than this one for someone who wants to study and really learn from nature.

Seeing the divine, the celestial, the pure in the common, the close at hand is one of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and many people never do. To see that heaven lies around us here in this world. ~John Burroughs.

Thanks for stopping in.

Warm air moved over the cold snow over the weekend, making a fog that was pretty thick in some places. This is the man-made railroad canyon in Westmoreland. Ice climbers call it the icebox and there was plenty of ice to see on this day.

Here, where the ground is sometimes up to 50 feet below the surface, it usually stays cold all winter. A lot of groundwater leaks out of the rock walls as well. This, along with the cold, makes ice columns that are often as big as tree trunks. So big that the Appalachian Mountain Club comes here to train ice climbers.

Today, there were some beautiful ice falls here, but I’m not sure if they were ready to be climbed.

There are many signs to tell you what goes on here, like this metal tie off. Ice climbers call these “screws. ”.

I’ve included this shot from last year to give you a sense of scale of the place. It doesn’t take much ice to get them climbing, but they admitted that they were rock climbing as well as ice climbing that day. I don’t usually speak to these people out of fear of breaking their concentration. The climber may be doing this for the first time, so they need to be able to hear and focus on the instructions coming from below. I’ll talk to them sometimes if I hear them say they need a break, but I never stay for long. They’re a gutsy bunch. I’d have to be taken off that wall one finger at a time because I’m so afraid of heights.

In places water quite literally pours from the rock walls. Until I came here I never knew how much ground water could be moving just below the surface.

Water pours and trickles from every crack in the stone, in winter and summer.

The ice falls can be very beautiful.

Groundwater doesn’t always flow there, and the place reminds me of the Shangri-La that James Hilton wrote about in his book Lost Horizon, even in the winter. Being here is like going back in time to a place that hasn’t been changed, even though it was made by people. The beauty of it makes it easy to lose track of time. I often have no idea how long I’ve been here.

That much water had to get out of the canyon somehow, so the railroad built drains on both sides of the trail. When they are maintained they still work as they were designed to 150 years ago.

I always go south to the southern part of the trail when I come out of a deep canyon. You’ll see a great example of how to build a retaining wall along the way. It’s about 10 degrees tilted back into the hillside. This adds a lot of strength to the wall. What’s left of a signal box is on top of the wall about halfway down, but you can’t see it in this picture.

And before long I saw this; the entire southern canyon was flooded. Trees and tree limbs fall regularly here and they often land in the drainage channels. This won’t be a problem if the channels are maintained regularly, but if the trees and branches aren’t trimmed, leaves will pile up and block them. That’s exactly what happened. The water had nowhere else to go but to run into the rail bed and wash it away in several places. I went over and cut off what branches I could, but it will take two strong backs, a chainsaw, and a stone rake to do it right. I met a man on a four-wheeler who was trying to clean up, but he didn’t have any real tools and wasn’t very good at it. He did say that many committees and commissions are aware of the problem, so hopefully it won’t be long before it’s fixed. This place is after all one of a kind. There is nothing like it that I know of anywhere else on this rail trail circuit.

Tree fern (Trentepohlia aurea) that grows on the walls seems to be spreading, which means the conditions are right for it to do so. It’s called “green algae,” but the green chlorophyll is hidden by a carotenoid pigment in the algae cells. This is hematochrome or beta-carotene, which is the same pigment that gives carrots their orange color. I’ll come here often one day, maybe after I retire, so I can learn more about its life cycle. I know it produces spores but it’s something I’ve never seen happen. Because you have to walk through the drain to get to it, I don’t get to see it up close very often.

There was some colored ice already forming. I believe the color comes from various minerals in the groundwater. The ice is always cut off in a straight line because the water level in the drainage channel goes up and down.

This evergreen fern is locked up in an icy prison every year, but it just shrugs it off.

A blackberry still had some color.

Here was more colored ice. Blue is the most dense but I didn’t see any of that. In fact much of the ice was rotten, which is what happens if it gets too warm. Rotten ice is soft and opaque and makes a dull thud when you strike it. New clear ice is quite hard and rings a bit when you strike it.

Here is one of the mineral seeps found along the trail. I believe it is iron, possibly oxidized by bacteria. Certain types of bacteria can take iron dissolved in groundwater and oxidize it. Oxidation keeps the iron from dissolving in the water and makes an orange slime like this one or an oily sheen. I think this must play a large part in why there is so much colored ice found here.

Here was a bit more colored ice. Location seems to be random because it doesn’t always happen in the same place year after year.

Reptilian great scented liverworts are very pretty plants that like to grow in places where clean ground water splashes or drips on them all the time. These plants like a lot of water, but they can’t stand being submerged in it. If the water level rises, they die back. Ice doesn’t seem to bother them because they are often totally encased it all winter in this place. This is the only place I know of to find them.

I could not get close to the liverworts because I did not have my rubber boots on, but I really wanted to smell them. Squeeze a small piece and smell it. Right away you’ll notice one of the cleanest smells I know of in nature. If you see liverworts, it means the water is very clean. That tells you a lot about how good the groundwater is here. Small brook trout swim in the drainage channels, which is another sign that the water is very clean.

You can also call the orange crust fungus (Stereum complicatum) crowded parchment. It’s a beautiful fungus that you can see from a long way away. It loves moisture so this place brings out its best.

It seemed like a good idea to find one of the mushrooms that Ötzi, the 5,000-year-old “iceman” whose well-preserved body was found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991, ate. Reading about him, I learned that he had two kinds of fungi with him: birch polypores (Piptoporus betulinus) and this one, the tinder polypore (Fomes fomentarius). There are many ideas about why he would have brought these two fungi with him, but I don’t think anyone will ever know for sure. It is known that birch polypores can kill germs and tinder fungi can help you start a fire. Someone walking 5,000 years ago would have needed both of these things.

The drainage channels send water into this stream, which then goes into the woods and into an unknown body of water. It could flow into Tenant swamp in Keene, which isn’t too far downhill from here. That stuff you see on both sides are “hills,” but they’re mostly blasted stone from the deep canyons.

Off in the distance a bridge goes over the stream. I always thought it was used for ore carts to get all the stone off the railbed, but now I’m wondering if it might have been for one of those pump handle carts they used to have. It’s pretty narrow—maybe 8–10 feet wide. It’s been years since I’ve thought about how the men got into the canyon and moved all that snow after each storm. Some locomotives had plows on the front, but I think there would have been a lot of work to do to clean up afterward. There wouldn’t have been much room for snow in the canyons because they are only 4 to 6 feet wide.

The old lineman’s shack, which might or might not make it through another winter, is where I think all the tools for clearing the snow would have been kept. Ever so slowly it leans in on itself. Today, when I’m writing this, we got 16 inches of snow, which makes me wonder if it’s still just a pile of boards.

One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. Something it has never been before. ~Anne Rice.

Thanks for stopping in.

I needed to be in the woods for a while so I chose Yale Forest in Swanzey. In the forest, which is owned by Yale University, forestry students get to work with real trees.

A road used to go north through the trail and into Keene. You can still see some pavement here and there.

The beeches and oaks were still hanging on so there was some fall color to enjoy.

There was also still some snow left from the first snow storm that dropped about 4 inches. First snows almost always melt away because the ground hasn’t yet frozen.

Evergreen ferns don’t mind snow. In fact they’ll stay green even under feet of it. On the right is a Christmas fern that stays green all year (Polystichum acrostichoides), and on the left is a spinulose wood fern (Dryopteris carthusiana).

On the marginal wood fern (Dryopteris marginalis), the sori that make spores are on the leaf edges. On the other hand, the sori on spinulose wood ferns are between the midrib and the edges. It can be hard to tell the difference between the striated wood fern and the marginal wood fern and the intermediate wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia) because they breed with each other. As usual, this one was making spores, which made me wonder why so many ferns, mosses, lichens, and clubmosses make spores when it’s cold outside. It has to be good for the species in some way, but I haven’t found it yet.

Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) is a common evergreen groundcover that grows along the trail. Small, heart shaped leaves on creeping stems grow at ground level. It has two-part white trumpet-shaped flowers in the spring, and bright red berries in the fall that you can eat but don’t really taste good. I leave them for the turkeys, which seem to love them. The green-yellow veins on the leaves of this plant that make them look like they were cut from hammered metal are my favorite part. I have several large patches of it growing in my yard.

Here was a downed tree; the first of many, I guessed. This year, a lot of trees have fallen across the road, and in some places they are almost impossible to get around.

When a tree falls, I always look at the branches to see what kinds of lichens are on them. This one had a lichen garden in its crown. Mostly foliose (leafy) lichens, which were in fine form due to the recent wet weather. Lichens don’t like dry weather so I haven’t bothered them much this summer.

I think the big light-colored lichen you saw in the last picture was a hammered shield lichen (Parmelia sulcata), so called because it looks like it was hammered out of a metal plate. These lichens are on the rare side here but I see them occasionally, always on trees. A lot of different types of hammered shield lichen are named, so it can be hard to find the right one. Fruiting bodies are said to be rare and I’ve never seen them. It is also said to have powdery, whitish soredia but I’ve never seen them either. Soredia are tiny packages of fungus and algae that break off of lichens. They are just another way for the lichens to reproduce.

NOTE: Someone who works as a lichenologist told me that this lichen is actually a tuckermanii plattersii, which is a type of lichen I’ve been looking for years. I hope my misidentification hasn’t caused any confusion. I know there are lots of lichen lovers out there.

Pics make the road look very long, but it’s probably only a couple of miles out and back. It was a nice, warm day, and there’s always a lot to see, so I wouldn’t mind if it went on longer.

And there was a big pine tree that had fallen, taking down a few maples with it. Its root ball was also huge.

Stageum complicatum, or orange crust fungus, is so bright that it’s like a beacon in the woods. It can be seen on downed branches from a long way away. “Complicated” is part of its scientific name, which means “folded back on itself.” This picture shows that it often does just that.

I saw some mushrooms squeezing out between the bark and wood of a stump.

I’m not sure what they were; possibly one of the wax cap Hygrocybe clan. Anyway, they were small and brown, and it’s not worth the trouble to try to figure out what kind of mushrooms they were. Even mycologists are too busy for them and toss them into a too hard basket labeled LBMs.

I think these bigger ones on a different stump were late-fall oyster mushrooms (Panellus serotinus), but I didn’t check the undersides, so I’m not sure. My color finding software sees salmon and coral pink, while I see orange. At this time of year, orange mushrooms growing in groups on wood are usually the poisonous Jack O’ Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus illudens). That’s why you should always look at their undersides and other features if you want to eat them.

And the mosses were so beautifully green!

Finally you come to the small stream you have to cross if you are to go on. I made it without falling once again, but I always wonder if this will be the time. Some of those stones are tippy.

Since the last time I was here, a new beaver dam had been built when I crossed the stream.

Recently chewed alders told me the beavers were very active. They make a clean cut on small trees like these that looks like loppers were used to cut the tree. Their teeth are very sharp.

The beaver pond had grown deeper and wider.

You can tell the beaver pond wasn’t here when this land was farmed, probably in the 1800s. You don’t build stone walls under water.

The sides of the pond were broken in several places, and the beavers will flood the whole area if they are not stopped.

Beavers are very good for the ecosystem, so I don’t worry about what they’re doing. But since this is all very close to a highway, the highway department will destroy the beaver dam so the highway doesn’t flood. I didn’t worry about that either; it has become part of the cycle. Instead I admired the beautiful red of the winterberries (Ilex verticillata). Their name comes from the fact that they like having their feet wet, and beavers are making sure they get what they want. This way, you can see that the beavers are giving the birds food in a roundabout way. They also create and provide habitat for a long list of animals, amphibians and birds. This area would be very different without them.

It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. ~Scott Westerfeld.

Thanks for stopping in.

Tree Stumps Fungus #fungus

FAQ

What is the orange stuff coming out of my tree stump?

Is orange fungus on wood poisonous?

How do you get rid of orange fungus on wood?

What causes orange fungus on trees?

This fungus, known as Fusicolla merismoides, colonizes the sap that leaks from a tree’s wound, giving it an orange color. While it may look concerning, this orange slime is harmless and does not harm the tree’s wood or foliage. This fungus thrives in the spring when the sap is rising and leaking from wounds on tree trunks or limbs.

What causes orange goo on trees?

Appearing in cool, wet weather during spring sap flow, the goo is caused by fungi, bacteria and yeast colonizing tree sap, especially where an injury causes excessive sap flow. Orange goo (or slime if you prefer) has been reported on a wide range of trees and shrubs from across the US and Europe.

Are orange slime fungi dangerous?

The orange slime fungi are simply growing on the carbohydrates (sugars) and moisture in the sap, but they do not cause diseases of the tree’s wood or foliage. These fungi thrive in the spring as the sap is rising and leaking from wounds on tree trunks or limbs.

What is an orange fungus?

Other common names for the orange fungus are sulphur shelf, crab of the woods, and sulphur polypore. The golden trumpet mushroom is a small rusty brown to dark orange mushroom growing in dense clusters. This orange mushroom is identified by its umbrella-shaped cap, thin dark orange stem, and pale orange gills.