Featured Mushroom #5: Cyathus striatus

Common Name: Striate Bird's Nest

From my experience tromping around in the woods, this is one of the more common, but less spotted mushrooms. Actually if you have mulch or wood chips bordering your yard, there's a good chance these little fruiting bodies have been right under your nose. I've occasionally even found these growing in potted plants.

Measuring about a centimeter, high and wide, these bird's nest mushrooms blend in quite well with twigs, paths, and leaves. The picture to the right shows them from the top down. They are not your traditional "cap & stem" mushrooms, rather they are shaped like little cups, or thimbles (for those of you who may remember what a thimble is). Located at the bottom of the "nest" are the "eggs." Not real eggs, but peridioles, where spores are enclosed.

As you can also see in the picture, some of the bird's nest mushrooms are white on the top. These are ones that haven't completely matured. When they do, that whitish sheath will split exposing the peridioles. (The bottom-most one in the photo shows it quite well.)

There are several types of bird's nest mushrooms in New England, including Cyathus stercoreus (Dung-Loving Bird's Nest). Commonly, the bird's nest mushrooms are also referred to as "splash cups." Unable to actively disperse their spores like many of their woodland counterparts, they rely on other methods including rain splashing in, and splashing out the spores!

Cyathus striatus (from the Latin, meaning "with stripes") has telltale striations running vertically the length of the mushroom. To get more info, you can visit MushroomExpert.com. And there's a great photo at morelmushroomhunting.com.

Photo taken at Mass Audubon's Habitat Sanctuary in Belmont, Massachusetts, July, 2004.