Notes: Growing on a pine log in Zone 04. It’s been there for at least 2 years; this one’s perennial.

Some SOB has been in there trashing things. It doesn’t even look like development of the land; just random cutting down of most of the large pines and aspens in a few specific areas, leaving the logs cluttering up the place (and blocking paths) and lots of smaller trees still standing (nowhere you could build a house, say, without one of them sticking up through it, unless it was a very small house).

Unfortunately, the fecund Zone 11 has been hard hit, along with the less interesting Zones 7, 8, 9, and 10 and the boring half of 24, with minor damage seen in Zones 5, 12, and 13. Zones 6, 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20, the interesting half of 24, everything south of the road, and some other zones seem untouched, including the site of this conk.

All of the Cortinarius alboviolaceus habitat seems to have been systematically trashed, and most of the Russula habitat north of the road. If there’s any pattern to the destruction, that’s it, but I find it hard to believe some a*!hole with a chainsaw would give a crap about Cortinarius, or have mapped their distribution so precisely. More likely, coincidence, or the trees the corts grow with (apparently mature and older quaking aspens) were the targets.