Attack Of The Invasive Asian Beauty Fungus?

[Music] hey everyone I'm Adam Harrison and I'm hanging out here in the misty winter woods with one fungus on my mind this is a fungus with a magical quality of mysteriously appearing here in North America only about a decade ago and this fungus is known simply as the Asian beauty because of its recent and cryptic arrival some people consider this fungus to be invasive so what exactly is this asian beauty fungus and what do we know about its recent arrival here in North America well that's the topic of this video so if you're interested in learning more about the strange and perplexing organism known as the Asian beauty come take a walk with me we'll see if we can find it [Music] okay so this log is covered by several different species of fungi the Asian beauties here there's a lot of other fungi as well some of them are actually more conspicuous than the Asian beauty like this one right here this is the violet tooth pali portrait captain by form there's actually an old cluster brick cat mushrooms down here behind me there's an artist conch just forming and there's a couple other species or stereo moss TRAI the false turkey tail this is a fallen oak tree it's been down for some time so it's no surprise that there are a lot of fungi colonizing this log but the star of the show today is the asian beauty so which one is the asian beauty what's all of this down here this crust fungus that's spreading across this fallen oak tree and this one if you look in the mycological literature you will see that the asian beauty is known as a hid neisha s' fungus so what's hidden a shis mean well it's just a fancy way of saying it's a tooth to fungus so does teeth or spines that hang downward and more specifically the spores are produced on these spines or these teeth that project downward they don't go up like you would see and maybe some coral fungi but they point downwards now the spines of the asian beauty are whitish won-young or creamy colored one young then as this fungus matures it turns yellowish then dried specimens will be brown and each spine is about ten millimeters in length now the size of individual fruiting bodies can certainly vary some of them are really really small so of course when they're younger specimens like this one right here it's only about an inch in width but if you look at an entire cluster like this right here this is maybe 8 to 12 inches in width and if you look from a distance it might seem like the Asian beauty is literally covering an entire log hence why this is called a crust fungus because of its ability to spread out in that effused manner now the texture of this is quite waxy and if you look in the mycological literature there's a fancy word for that Serratia s' if you look at a description you'll see that's described as having a Serratia spreading body again that just means that it's waxy now up until this point we haven't used any scientific binomials to describe this fungus we've been calling it the Asian Beauty but a lot of people who are interested in my ecology want to know the exact species name of this fungus the genus and the species name so what is this thing called well the most currently accepted scientific name seems to the rajala my sees copal and ii i and i say seems to be because there's some debate as to what this fungus should be called it's been called a lot of things over the years I believe originally it was called hidden impose an di and hidden um as the genus of hedgehog mushrooms it was also called Raja load on couple and I and a lot of people are still calling it Raja load on Kapil an di but based on microscopic features and based on a paper published in 2001 it seems that Raja lo Mai sees is the most currently accepted name of this fungus and if it is Raja lo Mai see that means that this fungus is placed in the order of Garrett Kali's and the family tere you'll a CA and we don't hear a lot about that family tere Lacey a too diverse but under research family of fungi comprised of mostly tropical species with coral like fruiting bodies now I want to briefly talk about the spores of rajala Mike sees copal and di because they are abundant and they're really cool to look at under a microscope so the harvest fresh specimens they will deposit spores for days and I recently harvested a few specimens brought them home to analyze under a microscope and to do that I took spore prints directly on microscope slides I covered the fruiting bodies with a piece of pottery to keep the humidity levels high so that the mushrooms wouldn't dry out easily and as you can see here the spores are white and if you want to take an even closer look at the spores you could put them under microscope so here I'm using a compound microscope with a few different objectives and after putting this slide on the stage I'll start with the smallest objective which is 4x but because the ocular lens is 10 times magnification 4 times 10 is 40 X magnification so that's what you're looking at here spores at 40 times magnification and you can see just how many there are if we take it a step further we could use the 10x objective so 10 times 10 is 100 times magnification which is what you're looking at here and now you're starting to see some of the detail of the spores if we take it one step further we can use the 40x objective and forty times ten is 400 times magnification here we can really see the shapes of the spores which in the mycological literature is reported as sub globos that's just a fancy way of saying that the spores are almost round and each sport is incredibly tiny with dimensions around seven by six micrometers each and just to show you how I need that really is one micrometer equals one one thousandth of a millimeter for one ten thousandth of a centimeter another way to say it is that there are 1000 micrometer x' in a millimeter or ten thousand micrometers in a centimeter so these spores are really really tiny and if you have microscope at home I encourage you to look at mushroom spores under the scope not just because this is one way to arrive at a positive ID but because microscopic features can be really beautiful and neat to look at now rajala my C's couple and iya is almost always reported on broadleaf hardwood trees and rarely on conifer trees personally I've only seen it growing on dead trees I've never seen it on living trees and never on barkless trees like completely barkless trees and this fungus is a white rot saprotrophic species that's very good at degrading the lignin in wood and as a result of its actions the wood the resulting wood has a white appearance due to the remaining cellulose now let's talk for a moment about the history of rajala Lexie's copal and iya here in North America because the story is really interesting in a bit mysterious it seems that prior to 2009 there were no official records of this fungus growing here in North America or anywhere in the Western Hemisphere this fungus had only been previously reported to grow in Asia but in 2009 this fungus was collected here in the United States in Massachusetts by a mycologist named Lawrence Millman and since then this fungus has been collected by a lot of people in many parts of North America with most sightings in eastern North America so this fungus had only been reported in Asia up until 2009 how did it get here to North America and how long has it been here did it just show up in 2009 or was it here before 2009 and no one noticed and if rajala my sees Koppel and BIA is native to Asia and it recently showed up to North America are there any negative consequences associated with its presence on this continent well the answer to all those questions is we don't really know we're not exactly sure how this fungus got here we're not exactly sure how long this fungus has been in North America and if it is indeed a new import we're not exactly sure if there are any negative consequences associated with its presence on this continent but there are some theories floating around some people suggest that rajala my seas copal and di has been present in North America for a long long time decades even centuries but we've always called it something else another thought which is probably the leading thought behind the mystery of rajala my seas couple an di is that it is native to Asia it showed up somehow in North America recently and this fungus is extremely aggressive it's spreading westward at a rapid rate and it's potentially invasive and as a result rajala my sees couple Andy I could be displacing native fungal decomposers now there's not much more we could say definitively without resorting to speculation but if we turn our attention towards the general topic of invasive fungi into the even broader topic of invasion ecology perhaps we'll discover some answers regarding the mystery behind the Asian beauty fungus so let's go do that [Music] so invasive species as you probably know are non-native species with high rates of colonization that cause undesirable ecological or economic impacts like this Japanese Barbary plant the reason that many people despise invasive species is that they're known to threaten the biodiversity of native species and to disrupt the normal functioning of ecosystems and I'm putting normal in quotations so it's no surprise that invasive species are certainly a primary concern in conservation efforts around the world but keep in mind that in a large number of these cases invasive species invade new ecosystems not because they're evil or because they're out to get us but because globalization and international trade brought them to new locations and of course we have humans to thank for that now when you hear the term invasive species I'll bet you immediately think of a plant or an animal but not a mushroom most people even ecologists don't necessarily think of fungi as being invasive or consider them to be among the top invaders in ecosystems worldwide case in point if we take a look at global invasive species databases fungi are poorly represented in these lists now most of the time when fungi are mentioned in the context of invasion ecology you'll hear about the effects of invasive plants and animals on native fungi so fungi as victims of invasion not as invaders but as victims of invasion but what about fungi as invaders what do we know about that fortunately we do know some things and what we do know about invasive fungi perhaps could help us determine what role if any radula might cease couple Andy I may play here in North America if indeed it is a new arrival now probably the most notorious of the invasive fungi are very conspicuous because of the effects they inflict with the native ecosystems so now we're talking about invasive pathogenic fungi the ones that originate in one part of the world they're brought to another part of the world then they wreak havoc on native speed particularly plants trees and animals most of these fungal pathogens were introduced unintentionally along with their host plants sometimes centuries ago by explorers and settlers who brought with them seeds and plants from their home countries and of course horticultural trading practices over the past couple of centuries have been responsible for the spread of invasive pathogenic fungi I'm sure you can name a few or recognize a few just based on what they've done within native ecosystems for example here in North America we are familiar with chestnut blight on our native chestnut trees butternut canker on our native butternut trees white pine blister rust on our native 5 needle pine trees and Dutch elm disease on our American elms just to name a few all of which were caused in part by a fungus that was not native to North America and right here is an American elm tree that's no longer living because perhaps the fungal pathogen that's responsible for Dutch elm disease has already gotten to it but fortunately I guess we're seeing some edible mushrooms fruiting from the street flammie line of elude appease the enoki mushroom choice edible mushroom in my opinion is fruiting from this dead tree so usually when you see dead American elm trees at least where I see them here in western Pennsylvania not too long after you see the enoki mushrooms fruiting from them but all over Pennsylvania we rarely see older more mature American elm trees because of this disease we see plenty of younger American elm trees that seem to be doing alright but not many older living healthy trees so just to summarize the past couple of seconds and we're talking about invasive pathogenic fungi clearly we're talking about invaders that have negative consequences in their newly introduced ecosystems but could invasive fungi have beneficial impacts in their introduced ecosystems well they could potentially if we're talking about introduced mycorrhizal fungi the ones that form mutualistic symbiosis with plants and trees now it might be more difficult to think of examples of invasive mycorrhizal fungi because their effects on ecosystems don't seem to be too conspicuous or detrimental but many ecologists have been studying the topic of invasive mycorrhizal fungi for decades now one reason that mycorrhizal fungi can spread so easily around the globe is that when non-native tree plantations are established the associated fungi become established in these new areas as well a good example of this would be when conifer plantations are set up many conifer trees are active mycorrhizal and it cannot thrive in introduced ranges without compatible fungi and when you introduce Pines or spruces or firs to a particular area you're also introducing the associated fungi to this new area via their my Celia or spores and once a tree and its associated mycorrhizal fungi are introduced to a new habitat the fungi not only grow within the plantations but they can also spread to nearby forests and establish relationships with native plant species an example of this would be Amanita muscaria also known as the fly agaric mushroom this fungus is considered to be invasive in a South American country of Colombia Amanita muscaria first appeared in introduced tree plantations in colombia in the 1960s today so 60 years later Amanita muscaria is associating not only with the introduced trees but also with a native tree species the Colombian oak tree Quercus Humboldt ti another example of an invasive ecto mycorrhizal fungus is the Death Cap mushroom Amanita phalloides this deadly mushroom is said to be native to Europe and it can now be found in South America and in many parts of North America including the northeastern United States in the state of Washington in British Columbia and in the coastal live oak woodlands of California now it's unclear whether there are any negative consequences associated with the introduction of Amanita muscaria and Amanita phalloides to new locations other than the spread of an extremely Lethal amatoxin containing mushroom in the case of Amanita phalloides but both Amanita scarier and Amanita phalloides are ecto mycorrhizal mushrooms meaning their ecological roles involve helping their host trees acquire minerals and other nutrients and that seems like a good thing but some ecologists worry that because these ecto mycorrhizal fungi capture a significant portion of resources these invasive Amanita mushrooms could displace by making resources unavailable to native fungi especially the ones that are rare or threatened so now that we have a general understanding of what some people call invasive fungi and we covered some of the myriad effects that these fungi can cause and they're introduced ecosystems let's go back to rajala my seas copal and di the Asian beauty fungus and continue our discussion we've already discussed the issue that we don't really know if this fungus is non native to North America it was first documented here in 2009 by that mycologist Lawrence Millman the weather was here before then and called something else or it did indeed arrive about a decade ago isn't entirely clear but if fragile oh my seas copal Andi I did arrive here in 2009 is it invasive meaning is it likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health while taking a cue from invasion ecology we see that invasive pathogenic fungi that in fact living plants trees and animals can cause significant damage we see that introduced mycorrhizal fungi aren't known to cause significant damage and may actually benefit invaded ecosystems but we don't know a whole lot about invasive saprotrophic fungi the ones that decompose woody material and organic debris so it's too soon to say anything too conclusive about the effects good bad or neutral associated with the introduction of the asian beauty fungus rajala my sees couple Andy I here in North America personally I'm not so sure we have too many things to worry about but who really knows certainly not me [Music] thanks so much for watching this video I truly appreciate it and I encourage you to get out and look for this really interesting and mysterious hid neisha s-- answer Asia's fungus known as the Asian beauty rajala my sees Koppel Andy I do you enjoy this video and you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel I encourage you to do that you could also head on over to learn your landcom sign up for the email newsletter we can stay in touch that way you can also follow me on social media on Facebook and Instagram at your land thanks again I'll see you on the next video [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 37,351

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Mushrooms, Mushroom, Fungus, Fungi, Botany, Plants, Medicinal Mushrooms, Invasive Species, Pennsylvania, Outdoors, Nature, Primitive Skills, Homesteading, Foraging, Herbalism, Mycology, Radulomyces, Radulodon

Id: pbcpHdSJeGE

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020