Outdoor Elements
A Fungus that Looks like Fido's Nose
Clip | 4m 49sVideo has Closed Captions
A Fungus that Looks like Fido's Nose
A strange-looking fungus can turn an ordinary walk into an exciting discovery! This time of year, Evie spotted Dog Nose Fungus and takes a closer look at this unique fungus and what makes it so unusual.
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Outdoor Elements is a local public television program presented by PBS Michiana
Outdoor Elements
A Fungus that Looks like Fido's Nose
Clip | 4m 49sVideo has Closed Captions
A strange-looking fungus can turn an ordinary walk into an exciting discovery! This time of year, Evie spotted Dog Nose Fungus and takes a closer look at this unique fungus and what makes it so unusual.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipIt's a pretty October day and it's rained for the last couple of days.
That's always a great time to walk in the woods and look for a variety of fungi.
On today's walk I've seen puffballs, I've see mushrooms on stalks, I have seen shiny mushrooms, little forests of mushrooms, all kinds, but one in particular.
Caught my eye.
It's not very common and if you've got a pet dog this one might particularly appeal to you because if you're a fan of looking at dog snouts this one looks just like that.
So here it is it's this black mass peeking out of this little cavity on this log.
That actually has no bark.
And that's fairly typical of this kind of fungus.
It is very, very hard.
And you can see it's shiny and it looks wet.
And it's literally growing right out of this log.
It doesn't have a stalk or a stem.
And I've read that that stem actually or the little stalk is buried.
Inside of the wood.
If you look closely on this one, you can see the remnants of what was a veil or a membrane that actually covered that growth right there.
And that veil is actually gray or almost yellowish tinted.
And over time, as this particular fungus matures, that veil strips back, decomposes, and we're left with this really black... Hard hard to the touch but wet looking fungus.
It's called dog nose fungus and it is black just like your dog's nose and it's covered with kind of like little pimples just like your dog knows.
The fun thing about it there's a lot well there's lots of fun things but one One thing is... It's believed that this fungus originally grew on American chestnut trees.
And of course we don't have those anymore.
It has adapted to oak logs like this one that this one's growing on and always is or most frequently is found on logs that are well decaying.
They have no bark left just like this.
One of the other fun things about this is there's a little bit of a mystery about how the spores might get distributed.
On some fungi, the spore, like on puff balls, like if they get hit with a raindrop, the Spores explode out.
They puff out.
And on some different kinds of mushrooms that gills, the spores drop out and are carried by the wind on a dry day.
But this very, very hard dog nose fungus is actually really different.
It has little crevices inside of it that hold the spores and as they mature, they come to the surface in this black slime.
You can see some right here on my finger.
It's definitely black.
And that's what makes that surface wet and shiny.
But how do those spores that are in that slime get distributed?
Well, people aren't really sure.
Perhaps insects crawl over the top of this and then crawl somewhere else on the log or to a different log, and perhaps that's how they get distributed.
They're too wet to be wind-borne, so it's gotta be a different mechanism.
In any case, I think, especially for a unique looking fungus, this one takes the cake for a name of a fungus that actually matches what it looks like.
Dog Nose Fungus.
Remember, you can find your own outdoor elements when you visit area parks and natural areas.
We'll see you soon.
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