I found this fungus growing on a very old fallen tree trunk at the end of April (2010) at Medina River Park, which is in the south of the city of San Antonio, Texas, on the Medina River. It had multiple morphologies, and I've included two. The more phallic looking specimen was about 6" tall, the other was probably about 4" tall. Can anybody help out with an identification?
It is a Polypore, and I bet they are immature specimens. The only question is - which one? Can you put your nose right near it and smell it? Does it smell like the rind of a watermelon?
Ah, if only I'd known to do that at the time. Unfortunately I didn't attempt smell it, so I can't say. When I'm down at the park again I will see if there are more of them and take a sniff. Thanks for offering some information though, because fungi are way out of my field; I just thought that these were 'neat'.
They most certainly are neat. I was hoping they were in your backyard and you could walk out and smell them. I'm a little curious about their actual species, and i'm sure we could figure it out with a little more info. Next time you pass the park you know what to do ...
I will try to make it back down there again soon, I'm intrigued now (and also I really like that park). Other than smelling them, is there anything else that I should look for? If I take a little home, should I look for anything in particular (I have a 20x/40x microscope at home)? I don't think that there's much hope of identifying the [long dead] host, but the area is a mix of live oaks, juniper (though it wasn't that, the trunk was too big) and cypress trees.
Sure! take your loupe and look for tiny pores that should be on the entire surface (except the cap, if one develops). Their presence would conclusively let us know it is a Polypore (and not an aborted gilled mushroom). Also see if the base of the 'stem' is black. And the smell.
