The featured image was taken at 1.05 pm on 20 June 2023, in the final 15 minutes of a walk in Deep Creek National Park’s old growth stringybark forest.
This particular coral fungus fruiting body (and its particular positioning, midst leaf-litter – it was another “pushy bastard”/ “remover of obstacles”… or, in its case, an uplifter of them) was especially beautiful, I thought…and still do.
Shortly thereafter, we returned to “our” cottage, before setting off on that afternoon’s much steeper walk.
”Weirdo” footnote
All of this series-proper’s fungi were photographed within one modest-sized forest, on a single, gentle walk of less than two hours’ duration.
Three days later, we concluded our final day in Deep Creek National Park with a brief walk in another patch of old-growth stringybark forest, just as day was turning into night.
(a deal of that day’s daylight was wonderfully spent on quite another kind of walk, which will be the subject of a future Pelican Yoga series. Before that, we’ll feature some altogether different places, far distant from South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula)
The photo below is technically woeful – in a wooded gully at 5.04 pm on the second-shortest day of the year, very little “available light” was available, and I had neither flash nor tripod.
However, the fruiting body in question was just so wonderfully weird that I had to photograph it.
I think it is fungal, but it could be a slime mold; in any event, it certainly “stood out” on the otherwise-dark, drab, leaf-littered forest floor.
