Among the Fungi

I went for a mushroom walk today. After months of drought we got about a month an half's worth of rain in 9 days. While that is nowhere near enough to refill the reservoirs and aquifers, and I think the water table is still very low, it has made everything very damp, which is great for mushrooms and other fungi. On my last few walks I have noticed a lot of mushrooms, so today I decided to take my camera out to photograph them. The thing about mushrooms is that you see them, and then if you look at them the next days they may look very different, either bigger, or a different shape because they have opened out (I don't know any technical terms about fungi, or I could describe this better), or they have been knocked over or eaten by an animal. There are many ways a mushroom can change from one day to the next, or even over the course of a few hours. So I knew that if I wanted to get pictures of mushrooms after seeing them on my after dark walk last night, I would have to go out today. Granted, there will probably be others out there tomorrow, but today I went on my hunt for mushrooms (only for pictures. I know nothing about which mushrooms are poisonous, and which ones are edible, so I will not be harvesting and eating any of them).

It took me two days to get this post finished, so here is a picture of this same group of mushrooms from the next day:

Look at the wood sorrel leaves at the base to get a sense of how much the mushrooms increased in size.

This one was growing in a hole in a tree trunk.

Rotting logs are a great place to look for fungi:

This fungus on a tree stump is one of the reasons I brought my camera out for a mushroom walk. We saw this on our hike after dark last night, and it was absolutely beautiful:

Even though my intention going out with my camera today was to take pictures of mushrooms and other fungi, I naturally was always looking for bugs, too. Even when I don't have a camera with me, I am always on the lookout for interesting bugs when I go for a walk. The tricky thing today was that mushrooms are mostly on the ground, so that was mostly where I was looking, and though there are some bugs on the ground, this time of year there are a lot more visible above that level. So, I probably missed a lot of things, including possibly things I was hoping to see while I had my camera with me, like another female pelecinid wasp. I knew, however, that in focusing on fungi I had a good chance of seeing bugs on the mushrooms and fungi. Specifically, fungus beetles. Which brings us to...

Backyard Bug of the Day:

Fungus beetle. There were a couple dozen of these on the trunk and among the fungi, which they were eating.

There were also several that were taking the opportunity of this gathering to socialize. 

 

 

 You may remember the "Boogie woogie aphids" I posted recently, aka beech woolly aphids. Like all aphids, they expel a substance called honeydew, which is basically sugar water.

Because the aphids congregate in such large groups, that means a lot of sugar water being expelled in one place. All of that sugar leads to the development of a black fungus on the leaves of the trees where the aphids are, and all over the ground below:

Lately I am seeing that not only is there the black fungus, but there seems to be another kind of fungus growing on the black fungus. In some places this is all over the ground and on the base of the trees where there are beech woolly aphids. 

A lot of the mushrooms have been knocked over. I don't know if they fall over from their own weight, or if some animal comes along and knocks them over.

I found one spot where there were multiple clumps of this:

(this is the other side of the same clump from above).

I figured that this was the same mushroom, but in a later stage of development. Notice the huge mass of mushrooms in the background.

It is very likely that every single one of these mushrooms is part of the same organism. I don't know what kind of mushroom this is, but the mushroom you see above the ground is the fruiting body of a much larger organism underground. Not that there is a massive fungus under the soil, but kind of tendrils that can cover huge areas, even some that can cover an area of over a mile. All of these pictured here are in an area about ten feet wide.

Close-ups of the two stages:

Now, scroll back and look at the first shot of these... And here is what they looked like the next day:

 

 

Growing on a tree trunk

Under a fallen log

I think these are the same ones above that were in such a big clump. I found these in a couple of places, but not in such big numbers as that first group.

 

 Here's what these two looked like today:

 

And here's what this one looked like last night:

Some of the mushrooms were tiny:

More of those yellow ones

I found a very old rotting log covered with moss and these tiny mushrooms:

I found a lot of these last summer. They are very odd. There is a gooey blob on the ground that these red orbs grow out of. Later they develop a growth on top that looks a little bit like a rose.

 

These are plants, not fungi, but they sort of act like mushrooms:

This is a flower called Indian Pipe. They are strange plants. They are not green, so they do not use photosynthesis. They grow in shady, wooded areas, and instead of sending out a shoot and growing leaves, and then buds and flowers, a clump of them will push up out of the ground like this, the flower already on the stem.

I have usually seen them all white, but the ones I have found in this spot in the woods are pink, another variation.

Eventually they turn die and turn black.

I love purple mushrooms! If I had only found a blue one I would have had the full rainbow of colored mushrooms in the woods today.

I saw a lot of this last summer, but last summer they were white. Which probably means it wasn't actually this. Anyway, not so much of it this year.

I don't know if this is a stage in its development, or if this mushroom is covered in mold. Today I found several of the ones I have seen over the last couple of days covered in mold.

This is a pretty large mushroom, about 6 inches or more across. That black thing is the seed of a tree that has fallen and stuck into it, like a feather in its cap.

I did see bugs (besides the fungus beetles and the boogie woogie aphids) on this walk, and even managed to take pictures of some, but I am going to post those in my next post, and let this one be all about the mushrooms.