They don’t grow in snow while temperatures are still freezing or anything, they grow using the moisture from melting snow once the weather starts to warm up. They just pop up so quickly that you’ll often find them poking out of snowbanks which haven’t fully melted.
I see. So it is not necessarily that their mycelium are better at surviving the freezing temperatures, but rather that either they fruit quicker once conditions are acceptable or that their fruiting bodies are more cold tolerant. Thanks, it’s interesting.
We typically get a lot of snow, sometimes 9ft in a single winter or more but the last few years have been pitiful. This was at a slightly higher elevation (I am at about 500 metres). I often see people in washington and oregon find this mushroom throughout the winter, I thought it would be later for my area but not the beginning of June.
Cool! I just read their wiki page and it says
Snowbank fungus is a new term for me. Not sure yet what makes a fungus thrive through snow. Maybe they have anti-freeze proteins?
Does your area get a lot of snow?
They don’t grow in snow while temperatures are still freezing or anything, they grow using the moisture from melting snow once the weather starts to warm up. They just pop up so quickly that you’ll often find them poking out of snowbanks which haven’t fully melted.
I see. So it is not necessarily that their mycelium are better at surviving the freezing temperatures, but rather that either they fruit quicker once conditions are acceptable or that their fruiting bodies are more cold tolerant. Thanks, it’s interesting.
We typically get a lot of snow, sometimes 9ft in a single winter or more but the last few years have been pitiful. This was at a slightly higher elevation (I am at about 500 metres). I often see people in washington and oregon find this mushroom throughout the winter, I thought it would be later for my area but not the beginning of June.