October Mushroom of the Month: Hairy Hexagonia, Hexagonia hydnoides
🍄⭐The October mushroom of the month is the Hairy Hexagonia, Hexagonia hydnoides
👏 Congrats to Juan for guessing it right and winning a membership to the society! 🎉
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A HAIRY SITUATION
It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the hairy hexagonia, aka Hexagonia hydnoides, got its name. Prolific and widely distributed, this non-descript bracket fungi boasts an iconic 5 o’clock shadow that gradually fades with age. A saprophytic white rot fungi, it can be found on dead and dying hardwoods throughout the America's, Africa and India. In East and Central Texas, it typically fruits in the spring and fall.
TAXONOMY
Cap 5–10 cm across; 4–7 cm deep; thin; irregularly semicircular; convex or nearly flat; densely hairy with dark brown to black hairs (but reportedly sometimes losing the hairs and becoming more or less bald with old age); faintly zoned, especially toward the margin; surface underneath hairs brown to dark brown.
Pore Surface Brown to dark brown; not bruising; with 3–4 slightly angular pores per mm; tubes 2–6 mm deep.
Flesh Rusty brown; not changing when sliced.
A SECRET SUPERPOWER
If you’ve been following us for a while, or watched our talk with Dr. Arturo Casadevall, you are probably aware of the connection between dark fungi and melanin. Dark mushrooms produce melanin, a natural pigment that provides structural integrity to cell walls and offers protection from radiation This protective ability of fungal melanin is linked to its capacity to absorb and dissipate electromagnetic energy, absorb free radicals, and provide a dark color.
