While hiking on the Salish Trail in Pacific Spirit Park yesterday I saw a row of small pale pink oyster mushrooms on a horiziontal dead log. I believe the log was from a deciduous tree, possibly red alder. My hiking companions are not very botanically inclined, so I didn't have time to take a photo and just grabbed one mushroom to look at. My sample was about 20mm x 30mm including a 5mm stem, and the others ranged from half that size to slightly larger. The upper surface was a creamy shell pink colour and the gills creamy and a bit less pink. The top surface was damp and quite sticky to the touch. The texture was somewhere between the thin fragility of Pleurocybella porrigens and the firmer Pleurotus ostreatus. I though I knew all the local oyster mushrooms, but I've never seen this one before. An online search produced Pleurotopsis longinqua/Panellus longinquus as a possible ID. It is listed in brothers.ca/Kent/BiotaLists/BCFungi.htm and mine looked a lot like the photo here mushroomobserver.org/... I couldn't find much about it online, and it isn't in any of my books, but it's a very pretty little mushroom to brighten up the woods in late autumn.
It might be an escaped cultivated species, as mentioned in the mushroomobserver Website. It is not listed for BC in the svims.ca mushroom distribution Website.
Thanks for letting me know about that site; svims.ca. I wasn't aware of it. I looked and found that Panellus longinquus is listed on that site as entry #970 with the note JFM OND U, which suggests that it is an uncommon winter mushroom. There are also a few listings under that name on http://linnet.geog.ubc.ca/Atlas/Atlas.aspx?sciname=Panellus longinquus which says "The correct name may be 1) Pleurotopsis longinqua or 2) Scytinotus longinquus ... It is found along the coast of BC, WA, and OR, and also Argentina, New Zealand, and Australia." Looks like I was just lucky to see it. I wish I had stopped to take a photo. I'll have to go back and see if they are still there.
Panellus longinquus is not uncommon in our area, but it is very beautiful - I am always happy to see it. Not always strongly pink, always fairly small, usually striate, almost always found late in the season, Nov/Dec. cheers, frog
