Whispering Pines

[M1 Abrams]

For the first time in too darn long, I managed to get out and do some hiking. I made the long, exhausting drive across Tabernacle for my first visit to Whispering Pines.

The white trail, the first of the two trails at Whispering Pines, features a lot of cedar trees.

The blue trail, which is longer and accessed via the white trail, has more pines.

With last weekend's rain, there were a lot of mushrooms to be found. I could have labeled this post "Even That Much More Mushrooms," but I couldn't scrape up the royalty payment for Rooftree.

Most of the mushrooms were of modest size. Here is an assortment of what I saw:

This made me think a little of a frog,

These mushrooms obviously took a Pine Barrens camouflage course sometime down the line.

It's a mushroom eat mushroom world.

I did find one large mushroom, but unlike Rooftree's pristine specimen, this one appears to have had chunks taken out of it.

Finally, we have a fungi that is wrinkled, somewhat asymmetrical, and not necessarily a thing of beauty. I know folks who would tell me that this could also serve as a description of the fellow who took its picture, except that I would never be mistaken for a fun guy!

 

[Rooftree]

M1. I like it. Ron
You can even use 'More Than Enough Mushrooms'.

 

[bobpbx]

I joined a mushroom facebook page a year ago, just to see the photos. That group had newbies posting mushroom photos and asking "can I eat this"? Sometimes someone in the group said "sure". I told one newbie that I'd be damned if I'd eat a strange mushroom just because someone else said it was okay. I told them 'if you want to eat mushrooms, start studying them until you are an expert, and then make your own informed decisions'. A few of the regular crowd gave me a thumbs-down.

 

[Scroggy]

All mushrooms are edible. Some are edible more than once.

 

[manumuskin]

I"m no expert but your bottom photo looks like a truffle.If so It would be edible but then again as Bob says don't eat it because I said it might be so.I know maybe twenty kinds I can identify good enough I"d risk eating them but all wild mushrooms have to be cooked or even edible ones are likely to bend you up with gas.

 

[ecampbell]

Where is Whispering Pines?

 

[Rooftree]

At the intersection of Route 532 and Patty Bowker Rd in Tabernacle. I have not been there.

 

[Boyd]

I've never heard of it either. The reviews posted here suggest it may only be about a year old?

Whispering Pines · R8WG+CH, Tabernacle, NJ 08088

★★★★★ · Hiking area

www.google.com

I think it's actually Wharton State Forest... isn't it?

https://boydsmaps.com/pines/#16/39.846849/-74.669856/pines2020/0/0/

 

[Teegate]

Yes it is Wharton. I have posted about the location a few times. However, they are now calling it Whispering Pines.

 

[Teegate]

Back in 2019 I first mentioned it.

Stone Searching... Fall, Winter, Spring 2018/2019

Those are great finds Guy! Good detective work again.

forums.njpinebarrens.com

 

[M1 Abrams]

@Rooftree.
Thanks Ron! Glad you liked it! I'm just grateful every day not to see the title: "More Than Enough M1 Abrams!" John

@bobpbx
I'm in your camp on this, Bob. Without someone having personally studied the subject deeply, eating wild mushrooms does not seem to be a good "hill to die on" figuratively, let alone literally. Sometimes folks can fall into the trap of thinking that the Internet can provide easy answers to complicated questions, even those with the potential of life or death consequences.

@manumuskin
When I tried putting that picture in Google Lens, truffle was one of the returns, but do truffles grow in the Pine Barrens? I couldn't find any online evidence that they did. Anyway, I thought that truffles grew below the ground rather than above it. If there is a mycology expert here who can shed light on this, it would be appreciated.

I only recently learned about Whispering Pines myself, or I would have visited sooner. I came across it while looking through some old threads. It was one of Teegate's posts that gave me the first heads-up about it, so once again, Guy, I'm in your debt. Thanks!

 

[manumuskin]

Truffles do grow underground but I have seen them dug up and these look like them,weather they grow above ground or not I do not know.have never found any myself.

 

[M1 Abrams]

Whatever it is, it was right at the trailhead, barely out of the parking lot. The ground there was packed down fairly well; it wasn't loose or sandy at that spot. You can see a lot of little pebbles around it.

 

[Scroggy]

The term "truffle" gets used pretty loosely for any cup fungus with fruiting bodies underground; unlike mushrooms and shelf fungi, which drop spores from the gills or pores, truffles have to be dug up and eaten by animals, the spores being dispersed in feces. I don't know whether any of the culinary truffles occur in eastern North America.

Northern flying squirrels (not present in the Pines) are surprisingly important dispersers of this sort of fungus.

 

[Boyd]

I bought a home back in the woods on Atsion Road in 2003 (and sold it a few years later). Never met the previous owners, but they sent me a nice note about the things they loved there. One of them was sitting on the deck and "watching the flying squirrels". I always thought that was odd, because I didn't think we had flying squirrels in the Pines and I never saw one in the time I lived there.

 

[Teegate]

I saw one on Nyoda Trail in Tabernacle when a friend of mine lived there. It was sometime between 1973 and 1977. I came up to the door and it flew off the house and landed at the base of a tree far behind me. He said he saw them all the time.

It was this house.

NJPineBarrens Maps

 

[manumuskin]

But we do have southern flying squirrels.I"ve seen several myself including one in broad daylight at Menantico.

 

[bobpbx]

Those squirrels are nocturnal if my memory serves me. I've only seen them twice in the pines, one time was on a pbx trip. I have no idea if they were northern or southern, and I didn't realize there was a difference.

 

[Teegate]

The one I saw was after dark and the front light was on. It glided off the house and I saw the shadow and turned around quickly to see it run off.

 

[manumuskin]

Those squirrels are nocturnal if my memory serves me. I've only seen them twice in the pines, one time was on a pbx trip. I have no idea if they were northern or southern, and I didn't realize there was a difference.

Yep very nocturnal hence the huge eyes which is why the one I saw in broad daylight shocked me.I have seen them at night too heard one in the leaves once and then found it with a flashlight.