Fire Cap Marasmius (Rhizomarasmius pyrrhocephalus)

I let the big announcement breathe for a bit but now we’re back to our regularly scheduled mushroom content.

On Saturday, I went down to the NYMS walk at Alley Pond Park in Queens. It was a brisk day but the wind was mild and the sun poked out for a minute or two. We found a good amount of ascomycetes and crusts, some of which I imagine we’ll take a look at later in the winter, but today we’ll focus on the one gilled mushroom we found. The Fire Cap Marasmius (Rhizomarasmius pyrrhocephalus) had withstood the recent sub-freezing temps and seemed to just be waiting for rain to perk back up again.

Fun Facts

There are five species in the genus Rhizomarasmius, a genus that was separated from Marasmius in 2000 by Ronald Petersen at the University of Tennessee. R. pyrrhocephalus is far and away the most commonly encountered mushroom in the genus. A sister species, Rhizomarasmius epidryas, is saprobic (a decomposer) on a cushion-forming dwarf shrub (mountain avens, Dryas) that grows in arctic-alpine environments.

The latin name is a mouthful but we can break down the etymology to help make it more digestible. Rhizo- means “root” and Marasmius (the former genus) means “withered” or “dried out”. These mushrooms can dehydrate (this is the state we found them) and then rehydrate when it rains again to continue spore dispersal.

The species epithet Pyrrhocephalus is intimidating, and the meaning of the name backs up the dizzying array of vowels and consonants. Pyrr- comes from the Greek pyr which means “fire” and cephalus means “head”. A firehead, a real tough guy. Most of these mushrooms were pretty dehydrated but the upside down one below still had fleshy, active gills that were releasing spores.

Ecology

The fungus is a decomposer on hardwood limbs and leaf litter. We found this specimen on a hickory limb that looked like it’d fallen off the tree within the year. The mushrooms have a long stipe which transitions in color from a dark brown, nearly black, at the base to a milky yellow color near the gills. When fresh, the caps are as the name suggests - a fiery orange. The stipe itself tends to be elongated and is coated in fine hairs that are best seen through a hand lens.

The mushrooms are found in eastern North America and have quite a long fruiting season for a gilled mushroom. They’re found early spring through late fall, and clearly can stick around well into winter.

You can see the hairs on the stipe which gives this mushroom a different, less compelling, common name: Hairy Long Stem Marasmius.

Bonus Grey Wolf

Yesterday’s full moon was called the Wolf Moon because wolves typically howl more in January. They are, in fact, more active in the winter and I learned this in December when I visited the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, NY. It’s a wolf education and conservation center that even helps release wolves back into the wild.

Silas was an “Ambassador Wolf”. He was one of two wolves (out of the twenty-nine total) that were handled by humans since birth and allowed to be seen by visitors at the WCC. The other twenty-seven could theoretically be reintroduced into the wild.

I’m with the wolves in that I prefer the cold weather of the winter, but I wouldn’t say I’m more active,

Aubrey