It's winter along Geronimo Creek in South Texas.
Mushrooms on the forest floor and fixed to dead trees are shedding their
cargoes of dusty spores.
"Chorioactis
geaster"
Click image to enlarge.
Each winter the Mims place
on Geronimo Creek in South Texas is sprinkled with specimens of rare
Chorioactis geaster fungi that are found only on one Japanese island
and in several Texas counties. |
by
Forrest M. Mims III
Today I photographed a brown mushroom surrounded
by a pale white circle of spores. Had there been any breeze, many of those
spores would have taken to the air and been carried a considerable
distance.
A few years ago, my wife Minnie saw the rarest
sight of all when a devil's cigar spewed a thin trail of smoky spores into
a cool November morning. This strange fungus, known to botanists as
Chorioactis geaster, resembles a dark brown cigar emerging from the
ground.
At the appropriate time, the ugly cylinder splits
open to form a striking tan star from which the spores are released.
The devil's cigar was first reported in Austin in
1893. It was later discovered in Kyushu, Japan, but 38 years passed before
it was again seen there.
In Texas, the fungus has been found only in
Travis, Dallas, Denton, Tarrant and Hunt Counties. Now its range can be
extended south to Guadalupe County, for over the past decade my family has
seen clusters of them under the cedar elms on our land along Geronimo
Creek.
We knew nothing about the devil's cigar or its
rarity until the September 1998 issue of Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine
arrived. A large photograph showed a cluster of them, two of which were
opened into star-shaped patterns the size of a small saucer. An article by
K. C. Rudy and Harold W. Keller described in detail the strange fungus we
have so often seen.
The appearance of the devil's cigar is unlike
that of any other fungus. It's also one of only 15 species that emit an
audible sound during spore emission. According to Rudy and Keller, the
hissing sound can be heard from a distance of several feet. There was once
a nice photograph of one of the web, but it has disappeared. Perhaps the
one posted nearby will take its place. Is the devil's cigar more common
than previously thought? To find out, the editors of Texas Parks &
Wildlife offered a free subscription to readers who sent photographs of
the exotic fungus. Apparently they received only one photograph, which was
published in the December 1998 issue. So while my family's observations
along Geronimo Creek have expanded the known range of this botanical
rarity, so far the devil's cigar is as rare as claimed. I plan to explore
some of the questions raised about the devil's cigar by Rudy and Keller in
a scientific paper they wrote about the strange fungus. Why is it so rare?
What kind of climate and soil does it prefer? How often does it emerge?
I am especially interested in the possibility
that spores from the devil's cigar arrived in Texas on clouds of Asian
dust during spring wind storms. Every few years, huge clouds of Asian dust
blanket the West. Since some of this dust passes over Kyushu, Japan, does
it sometimes include C. geaster spores?
My biggest ambition is to see what Minnie saw--a
devil's cigar in full smoke! I especially want to photograph this
mysterious fungus as it spews forth its smoky progeny for the next
generation. Meanwhile, the Texas Legislature may get to know the devil's
cigar. The dramatic star-shaped fungus has been proposed as a living
symbol of the Lone Star State.
Forrest M. Mims III and his science are featured
online at
www.forrestmims.org.
This feature was originally published in
Forrest Mims's weekly science column in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise,
Seguin, Texas. The column is written for a general audience.
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