Waxy Caps in Late Winter

This is typically my least favorite time of the year. Despite still being ski season, which I do like, the weather here in Washington can be pretty lame this time of year. Rarely warming above 40 degrees, and not usually cold enough to snow, its just a cold drab, and often windy part of the year, oh yea- and there are no mushrooms out. Well, there are some tree conchs, the occasional lawn mushroom, and a smattering of uninteresting small saprobic mushrooms like Tubaria. I will say that the turkey tail(Trametes versicolor) can be quite lovely this time of year, but other than that I have to get creative to post consistent content on the channel. This time of the year is by far the slowest traffic to the YouTube channel, seconded only by the depths of summer, which has fleshy edible mushrooms growing like summer Chanterelle and Lobster Mushrooms.

Then I remembered I haven’t taken my annual winter walk at Manchester State Park. This park was a military installment in WW2 and still has many of the old cement bunkers and military garages that are now open to the public. The park is perched on a point of the southern Kitsap Peninsula on the edge of Rich Passage, a small strip of saltwater connecting the Sinclair inlet to the larger part of the Puget Sound. This park isn’t my typical mushroom hunting grounds, because I tend to prefer spending my time strolling in lush conifer forests and Manchester doesn’t have much of that. This park is comprised more of a mix of large Maple trees and a lot of Red-cedar, neither of which are partners of ectomycorrhizal mushrooms. This is a place where I often find loads of Oyster mushrooms in the spring, growing from dead Alder trees between the parking lots. One year I even found a huge patch of Morels, a saprobic type of meaty morel by the hundreds, growing among the maple leaf duff. That was quite untypical. I have returned every year since but I have never found another Morel there.

One thing I do seem to find this time of year growing among the maple leaf litter and the cedar scales is waxy caps, beautiful and brightly colored gilled mushrooms in the genus Hygrocybe. These mushrooms are not typically known to be edible, as they are often in too small of amounts and have a strange texture. They are very photogenic and just really cool to look at and find though. Usually red to orange and bright yellow, these mushrooms stand out against the drab landscape of the lamest part of the year, signaling the start of a warm up leading into spring.

Yesterday I took Gunnar on a small stroll through the winding trails up the hill from the parking lot, looking carefully and slowly, as I am hopeful to find any mushrooms to photograph and film this time of year. Sometimes I will find deadly Galerina growing in this area, which I find fascinating and I like to photograph. But on my walk I was finding nothing! A small crust fungi growing on a twig here or there, but aside from that, nothing, nada. How depressing. I zigzagged through the woods for about 30 minutes with my trusty hound, going to all the usual spots where I expect to find something, only to be disappointed again and again. I guess I had came too early, even for the very mild winter we are having. I decided to head back to the truck and refocus my mycophile mind on the next “top 10” video I could make, when low and behold I saw a flash of orange peeking from beneath the leaf duff on the side of the trail. Tah Dah! they’re out! I came across two beautiful orange/yellow colored waxy caps in a small niche, a microhabitat, on the back fence line of the park. They dont smell like much, and a small nibble and spit of the edge of the cap has not much flavor, but a sweet and almost metallic thing going on. I like to hold them and look at them, then photograph them. They can be tricky to photograph because theyre so bright, often you have to lower the exposure to see the details. I encountered two more, brightly colored yellow ones just 20 feet up the trail, which were blown out, caps laying in the leaves, from old age. I suspect they’re the same species, just of different maturity levels. I’m not exactly sure of the species, as many of these mushrooms are yet to truly be described here for the west coast, but I would compare them to Hygrocybe flavescens, the European variety. After filming and photographing them I collected one to bring home for the microscope, and it sits next to me as I type this. I’m glad the mushroom Gods smiled on me once again, and I am happy to report the Wax caps are up in this area and worth the search if you like to look at pretty mushrooms!