Postia ptychogaster,a rare and unusual fungus.
This fungus has been previously known as Tyromyces ptychogaster and Oligoporus ptychogaster. It's present
name is Postia ptychogaster. If you are unaware as to why some fungi are "rebaptised" you can click here to find out.
This fungus caused me a lot of problems when I first tried to identify it. For one thing it didn't look
like anything I had ever seen before.It was obviously a polypore,but what kind of polypore could it be that didn't mature?
The first year I saw this fungus it was already in a state of initial decay,but I knew that this was something
"different". I took some photographs and a GPS fix and promised myself to visit my mystery polypore the following autumn.
The following year I returned to the same hemlock log and so had "my" polypore.I took more photographs
and returned at weekly intervals to check on it's progress.What you see below is a sample of the dozens of photographs that
I took.I followed it through the Autumn and it decayed in exactly the same way as it did the previous
year, without ever maturing. This really piqued my curiosity and the challenge was now on to try and identify my polypore.I
have a lot of books and I scanned them looking for a clue as to what my polypore could be.It wasn't until I picked up a book
that I very rarely consulted that I believed I had found my polypore. It was a European book authored by a native of the Czech
republic and later translated in to English. It was sold in the United Kingdom but it came in to my possession
via a book seller in Ontario.
Postia ptychogaster is a very rare fungus in Eastern Canada.
It is known from Western North America(west of the rockies) and also from Europe.
It has been recorded only once in Quebec.It has never been recorded in N.B.,P.E.I.,Ont or Nova Scotia
until my recent find.
I dried several specimens and I sent them to Agriculture Canada in Ottawa.They confirmed that they were
indeed,Postia ptychogaster.
