I am still catching up on making these progress reports so it is still October as I write this but I'm happy to be a little bit closer to reality with this month. At the beginning of the month we continued to target the coast and early fall-like conditions, on a trip together still. I had planned to return at the end of September, into October, but failed to make the trip due to personal and work reasons. I am glad to confirm though, that I will be heading back up to see Brodie in Olympic, this Halloween weekend. For now though, back to discussing this report month.

We had a very nice time camping out at Ozette, and I think will likely continue to make that a spot for edge of season collections. In fact, we had such success finding early fall conditions that shortly after running into an entomologist also doing permit research in the park, we got rained out! Brodie then continued the remainder of our monthly collections in a variety of habitat, he has been doing a lot of serious hiking and taking many photos of different things. Of course, including mushrooms.

He reports that conditions east of the Elwha river valley remain fairly dry, with little representation of the same conditions we have already seen on the coast multiple times. Even through writing this, we are planning to go west of this ecological marker that exists with the Elwha river for our upcoming collections together. Another marker Brodie has been reporting on for us is the presence of a presumed Hericium oregonense / erinaceus fruiting that has occured just on the west side of the Elwha previously. We expect this region will experience more wet conditions through November, before things get a bit too cold for many macrofungal species. 

However to again continue talking about September, Brodie has maintained that more diversity and thus easier collections, have been made in the river valley habitats to the west and also at higher altitude in areas that may see more moisture and more water retention. At some point we stopped making individual headers for different collection areas and days of collection in these reports. I think we will retroactively go back and add those headers, along with some additional photos. You can see some better examples of that format in our two first full months of reporting, March and April this year.

Not much else to put here in the beginning besides the fact that I am thrilled to visit Olympic again soon myself, and am looking forward to many of the sequences from these recent visits back to our former home base. It seems like we are just now starting to narrow focus a tiny bit, and I think we will continue to show that as I return more to study with Brodie through next year. 

Anywho, September below!

I will do some microscopy here and on the previous observation to try and determine which genera we are working with, before publishing continued updates and sequences. We will see if I can beat the shipping/ lab. 

Maybe just an immature fruiting of a slightly different colored species with a blushing stipe, which still does help a bit with direction in the genus. 

However, it does not immediately resemble other collections I've made in the genus and Brodie agrees. Some slight differences in color, stature, even the gills and attachment to some degree. We shall see where she lands!

They don't look similar, and are now separated by genus. However, I think it would be nice to take the same route here as with the previous Gliophorus collections I am so interested in. Clearly growing with moss here, and there might be a good reason! I think we will collect some sequences and circle back on more thorough study of the ecology of any cool Hygrocybe or Gliophorus moss associations. Even if that means waiting until next year to continue. We may have to also seek material from outside the park or, work with the park on extended permitting for some of that process. We shall see!

We certainly have a lot to learn here personally, and hopefully we can contribute some meaningful data along the way.

 We've started checking them for UV as we've found some Nolanea esque mushrooms fluoresce quite blue. I didn't know that previously!

Now, we do have a couple Ramaria araiospora varieties here, so it could be the more vibrantly red toned one. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that R. stuntzii is a possibility here. 

Both species belong to the same subgenus, one is much less common. I voted for the latter for WA state mushroom, I am a strong holdout. I love that thing. The regular red ones are okay too but, R. stuntzii is king. 

I am assuming most of what we're finding with this coloration heading into the fall are Myxacium and Phlegmacium but I'm not sure. Again just what we're finding in this color, there's certainly more possibilities in the family and we're certainly finding others. 

Again I'm not very experienced in the family and, my Cort pro friends are seemingly off grid. Will try to make some better educated guesses before sequence. I'm sure there's a couple of these collections we can ID to species before sequence if we really tried. I'm told spring might be easier for cort ID here though, so maybe that's a false sense of confidence.

Despite their bland appearance there's a bit of interesting toxicity in the genus as well as some interesting ecology. Including some studies proving some interesting relationships with plants/trees, growing them in cultivation, etc. Neat stuff that I might have to reference when looking into the ecology of some other genera we (or I) might be more preferential towards.

Since I don't have much else to say about this genus I'll just note about observation titles, sometimes they will be more general, sometimes more specific, etc. Sometimes sorted more specifically on the species directory, as a tentative placement. What have you. Anyways, take care!