What is my Lion's Mane totem doing?

...and what should I do about it?

Inoculated on Maple cut in March, this lion's mane totem was processed according to field and forest's instructions and using their spawn. It was cut accordingly, sandwiched with sawdust spawn, and wrapped up in a garbage bag until now. Something definitely is going on in there, and what must be mycelium, unless it's mold. It's a mystery to me how mushrooms could propagate in such airless conditions .

Now that something has thoroughly colonized it, should the bag be removed? The rainy season is here and if this is lion's mane, it will be very excited.

I'm not an expert, but I'd take the bag off it, something has colonized it, whatever it is can't be changed or removed, and it would like the rain. Hope it's lion's mane!! Uncovering it will let you find out what you have.
:D

It could be what you inoculated the log with. I have only grown Lion's Mane on sawdust blocks in a humidity chamber.  It looks like it took off and colonized well.  The outside may just be surface colonization but the end of the log is a good indication it is getting into the while log.
I did similar sized logs with Shiitake and Oyster and it was a couple of years before I saw fruit. The larger the log the longer it takes and the longer it will provide fruit.  
I was about to give up on my logs but decided to wait till the next spring and now I have a constant winter supply of Shiitake and I found I can get fall and spring oyster in the woods about 3 miles from where I live.

Thanks folks, I figured what was done was done and unbagged it for the fall rains. All my logs are colonized, but it's still hard to tell by what..like I'm hoping the nubs on the reishi logs are not turkey tail.

I'll post positive results here!

Turkey Tail is a good medicinal mushroom like Reishi. Of course I can find them almost anywhere around where I live.  

Sure they are Dennis, and the healthiest chewing gum on a log! They're welcome anywhere outside of my stacking yard.

hau Fredy, that is mycelium you are seeing, you can take the bag off since I see mycelium has occupied both ends of the log, the top appears in the photos to be lion's mane mycelium (note how the top is thickening, that is a fruit starting to form the base).

The best lion's mane take about 3 weeks to grow once a fruit has started putting out the first string formations.
Lion's mane is a great fungi, once it starts establishing mycelial threads it puts out two toxins that only effect other strains of fungi, thus preventing them from stealing the lion's mane food supply.
The enzymes this fungus puts off to deteriorate the lignin and other portions of the tree so it can take them in for food processing.

That log looks really good for getting some fruits. (Lion's mane typically puts off one fruit per year for two or three years.\
You can inoculate a new log by placing it in contact with the current mycelium loaded log, the fungi will spread to the new one.
To prevent other strains from "Infecting" your log, use cheese wax to seal the cut ends except where you put the two (new log against old log) in contact.

Redhawk

The bag's been off for a few weeks now, and the surface mycelium has vanished! It might be the cold, or the drying effect of exposure, because although it's raining periodically the totem is under a large cedar that wicks most, if not all, of the rain off its drip line. The humidity is still 90-100% per day, every night there is heavy dew, and the totem is completely shaded...I might move it to a slightly wetter and less shaded side of that sheltering cedar.

I didn't know most of that about lion's mane! Come late winter I will cut some fresh maple and place it adjacent to this totem then!

I sealed the ends of my stacking logs with beeswax (now I see why cheesewax is used...beeswax is harder to work, more expensive, and more appealing to rodents who have already chewed off shavings), but not the totem. Is sealing totems a good idea as well? I thought the plastic bag kept the culture relatively isolated until it had established.

I just put a short log on top of the totem. Just want to minimize the exposure.

For me it is now Shiitake season since my varieties are cool and cold weather types.

Dennis, a short log like the hat my totem has on? Under that is sandwiched spawn.

Yes exactly.  I have seen some people cover the very top with plastic, The idea is to not let the log dry out.
I keep all my logs in a shade room and have a sprinkler system for dry spells.  I also put them on 12x12 inch pavers to keep the bugs down.  That is why I grow cold weather varieties (BUGs).

Nothing wrong with using plastic bags, I just like to keep as much plastic away from my land as possible, which is why I use cheese wax.

When surface mycelium seem to go away, they really haven't unless they died from some sort of exposure to super cold (frost for example) or they dry out.

Except in summer, we don't need to water logs here, we get 66" of rain annually and the humidity from Oct-May hovers near 100% most days. There's drenching dew/mist every night, so thick it blows along air currents visible on cameras, which don't work as well from it. In summer I put a fan-pattern area sprinkler in the stacking yard, it also hits a bed of Stropharia Winecap and some seaberries.

We did have a couple nights at 22-25 deg F, but the totem is sheltered under a huge cedar, so I doubt it was much impacted. Every day in the mushroom yard is interesting now.