From the world pool: June 8, 2018

I’ve been lazy recently. Not so many links.

The last day of February

Where did the time go? Well, some of it went to walking in the woods.

Light and shadow and it’s still wintery enough for the light to be all golden.

More fungus

From today’s walk.

Some kind of yellow coral fungus.

Orange mushrooms from the side…

…and upside down.

A turkey-tail type fungus from underneath…

…and above.

And finally, your basic boring brown mushroom, but with some elegant frills.

Have some mushrooms.

We had some enormous ones this year; these photos are all of the same kind. This was an early stage before it started to flatten out.

Fluffy!

And a bit dewy.

And a bit friendly.

Oddities

Well, not all of them are odd, but certainly there were some on a recent walk.

This was the first one. Why had someone chiseled 3 holes into this tree trunk? It was done by humans, not animals; I know pileated woodpeckers peck rectangular holes, but they aren’t quite as rectangular and smooth-sided as this. And it looked like it was a few years old, and dug in rather than being a simple blaze.

But here’s the other thing—the tree originally caught my eye because it was so obviously 2 trees nestled together; the trunks stood out because they were differently coloured.

Except they weren’t. Higher up, they were clearly joined, and in fact the split doesn’t go through to the other side of the tree.

This burned out stump wasn’t an oddity, particularly, but the hole was like an eye to the rest of the forest.

Another oddity. When trees fall over I’m not used to seeing the end with the roots suspended fifteen feet up. (It had fallen into the space between two other trees and jammed fairly high off the ground, and the weight of the crown had pulled the root ball into the air.)

And this isn’t an oddity at all, just some nice fungus.

And a detail, because I can.

Winter light

The light of a winter sun is one of my favourite things. So have some beauty to share.

Old wood and bracken

Dew on a salal leaf

Fungus on a tree trunk

Shadow on tree trunk

Bird’s nest fungus

The wee, wee eggs!

Actually, they’re fruiting bodies. It’s from the Nidulariaceae family, if you’re into the Latin. Wikipedia says, The nests are “splash-cups”. When a raindrop hits one at the right angle, the walls are shaped such that the eggs are expelled to about 1 m away from the cup in some species. 

This is growing on our back gate. I’m not sure it’s a good sign for the overall health of our gate.

From January 14th

From yesterday’s walk in the woods.

Snowy walk

From a couple of days ago.

The bark mulch

…seems to have turned into a compost heap. Well, it is almost two years old. But really, I got quite a shock when I walked by and saw what it was growing.

These are really odd mushrooms: they don’t seem to have a top over their gills.

I think it must have rotted away as they aged, but I’m not sure.

At any rate, they’re roughly 2 inches in diameter, and there’s LOTS of them.

Still pretty, though they’re certainly past their “best by” date.

This appears to be what they look like before they unfurl.

And maybe this as well?

But these are definitely not related. It’s a convivial mulch pile, evidently.

Today’s walk

…was rather nice, considering it rained for some of the time.

We found mushrooms. (This one was about 8 or 9 inches in diameter.)

We found a strange white fungus on a tree trunk, oozing liquid.

We found autumn leaves, of course.

We found the edge between sandstone and cedar.

We found apples!

We found one of the most beautiful nurse logs I’ve ever seen.

We found the vegetation at the edge of the marsh, all in layers.

We found autumn leaves in the cleft of a rock.

We found a very good time with friends.

February fungus

Just ’cause.

Fungus, fungus everywhere

Look what I found!

So: last week I went for a walk on a Brand New Trail™ just cleared a few days previously…

Shroom season starts

It’s that time of year again.

Gills

It’s time for pictures of the underside of fungus. 

Social patterns

Let’s all get cozy.

Yesterday I hauled out the camera, as mentioned in that day’s post, and went fungus-hunting. These are some of the little beauties I found—I think you can probably guess that the theme is patterns. They all just seemed so… friendly. 

Fuzzy wuzzy

I decided to go mushroom hunting in our yard—to photograph, not to eat, as I’m no mushroom expert—and found this. Odd, isn’t it? I suspect it’s a parasitized mushroom overrun by some kind of furry slime mold, probably something like this, but who knows what lurks in the heart of our yard? I’ll post  pictures of more mundane fungus tomorrow.

Shadowed mushroom

Unexpectedly popping up by big rock.

Sweating fungus

 

But such pretty sweat.

Well-organized white fungus

What I thought was interesting about this fungus was its rather obsessive organization. There it is with a smooth, even covering of the tree trunk, and then intermittently it suddenly puts out a shelf at almost precise right angles—fluted and curling a bit to be sure in the direction of the shelving, but at a pretty consistent thickness, without any extreme thick-to-thin transitions.

Most fungi that I’ve seen are a lot sloppier in their assemblage. This one looks like it has a compulsion to be tidy.