fungus
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Like Buttah
Jelly fungus on downed tree limbs. Exidia genus-mates here, I believe. On the left, Amber Jelly Fungus, E. recisa. On the right, Black Witches’ Butter Fungus, E. glandulosa. Genus Tremella. I first thought Witches’ Butter, but there are a couple of similar ones in this genus. More Black Witches’ Butter. This downed stick had a…
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Bracket Fungus
Cracked Cap Polyphore is so intimately associated with black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) that the fungus’s binomial memorializes it: Phellinus robiniae. Hard to find the tree without the fungus. Right next to this black locust is another, and it also sprouts some of these shelf-like fungal growths. N.B.: both of these locusts are still alive.
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Two Epic Mushrooms
Dyer’s Polypore, as its name suggests, has been used for dyes. Phaeolus schweinitzii is also known as velvet-top fungus. It is, indeed, rather velvety on top. This parasitic fungus is associated with conifers. Berkeley’s Polypore, Bondarzewia berkeleyi on 9/14, with my size 9 boot (8 in Australia) for scale. It was a whole continent of…
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Mushroom Monday
First, one is noticed under the pine.Then the others. This stray oak leaf looks gigantic next to them. John Adams, of all people, forecasting Trump: “the weakness, the folly, the Pride, the Vanity, the Selfishness, the Artifice, the low craft and meaning cunning, the want of Principle, the Avarice the unbounded Ambition, the unfeeling cruelty.”…
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Mushroom Heaven
There was a lot of rain in September. That made the fruiting bodies of fungi very happy. This one was found like this. I don’t suspect Andy Goldsworthy….Deep under a beech. Very hard to reproduce their (fungi are more closely related to animals than plants) purples, at least as seen by my all-too-human eyes. ***…
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Rust Never Sleeps
Cedar-apple rust (Gymnosporangium juniperivirginianae) just past its peak gelatinous stage on an Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. These telial horns fire off spores during the wet spring season. The spores float off, perhaps to find a rose family tree like an apple or crabapple (Malus) for the the next stage…
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Bracket
Or shelf. Monday’s mushroom, or fruiting fungal body, was growing out of a stump in Green-Wood. The volcanic cone of old wood, all hollowed out inside, was host to several such ‘shrooms: this was the smaller and fresher looking of them. I know it’s the beginning of the week, but just think of the fungal…
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Obolaria virginica
A gentian family member not easy to spot down in the leaf litter of early spring. This was poking up less than two inches. We found this one, and others, in an unused, unpaved driveway in Virginia. Appropriately enough, since both its species epithet and common name, Virginia Pennywort, reference the state. (Virginia Pennyleaf is…
Backyard and Beyond 