“Rain rain go away. Come again another day.” goes the children’s nursery rhyme.  Schools out and the summer is here but as far as I am concerned the frequent rains can stay around for a few more weeks. We are seeing lot of different fungi species in the woods at the moment. There are good numbers of boletes to be found and it is the start of the Black Trumpet and Chanterelle seasons. Black Trumpets like a lot of rain and we have had 3 or more inches above normal for the time of year and they can be found in some spots already. I have been finding black trumpets on the forest floor where there is a lot of runoff. Its like looking for holes in the ground. Or a pile of dark leaves. I brought my children with me as they seem to have better eyes for finding them. We picked a respectable haul that has either been eaten or dried for later on in the year.

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There are a couple of different species of black trumpet and it seems that Craterellus fallax is the species we find here in the US while Craterellus cornucopioides seems to be confined to Europe. There may be yet another species on the west coast that looks like Craterellus cornucopioides but is temporally called Craterellus species 01. When looking at the black trumpets I’ve found locally there looks to be two different types growing together. It could just be morphological differences or it may be a separate species. It is certainly something to explore with DNA barcoding.

All this rain also means that I keep finding species that I haven’t personally found before like this Helvella macropus Long-stalked Gray Cup.
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There is a walk at Townsend Park with Friends of Murrysville Parks  on Saturday 27th June although rain and possibly thunderstorms are forecast. On Sunday 28th June the club will be hunting for boletes on the Pine Ridge Park Bolete walk. Wherever you go, I wish you good hunting!