Courtesy of Fort Worth Botanic Garden
The Texas Star mushroom
With a resolution signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas now has a State Mushroom.
For real. This is a thing.
Only two other U.S. states — Minnesota and Oregon — have their own state mushrooms. Texas becomes the third, and its designated fungus is a rare, star-shaped variety known as Chorioactis geaster, also called the "Devil's Cigar" — or, more appropriately for the Lone Star State, the "Texas Star" mushroom. The mushroom typically appears in late fall, emerging as a dark brown, fuzzy capsule about three to four inches in length, that splits open like a star when it matures.
Turns out, the Texas Star mushroom isn't exactly plentiful all over the state. According to the Fort Worth Botanic Garden | Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), the mushroom is highly selective about where it grows, mostly attaching to decaying cedar elm stumps in the central and northern parts of Texas (16 counties and recently in Oklahoma); and the only other country it's been seen and documented is Japan.
It's also made an appearance at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden.
“I first spotted it at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden, then started looking for it around decaying cedar elms and saw it at a few other places,” BRIT research scientist Bob O’Kennon said in a statement. “What’s really interesting about this species is not only the cigar-like shape, but when it opens up, there is an audible hissing sound when it forcibly releases its spores.”
O'Kennon has been noting Texas Star mushroom appearances, finding and documenting more than 60 different sites using the iNaturalist app. He's become one of the region's top iNaturalist observers, saying that it's likely only a few hundred people have seen the rare mushroom.
BRIT resident researcher Harold Keller and fellow biologist K.C. Rudy also found the mushroom growing "abundantly" in the early 1990s along the Trinity River at River Legacy Park in Arlington. The fungus has reportedly been seen throughout North Texas.
“As this fungus matures, it splits open from its apex and forms a good-sized, brightly colored star and naturally, we have always thought it made sense for it to become the state fungus of the Lone Star State,” Keller said in a statement.
