Tag: forest

 

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.

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I had never previously seen mushrooms with such spectacularly shiny, exquisitely coloured tops.

If you zoom in on/enlarge them, you should be able to enjoy some Dali-esque, distorted reflections of the old-growth stringybark forest’s canopy.

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Q: What does the appearance of this mushroom tell us about how it achieved its position and dimensions, as at 1. 07 pm on 20 June 2023?

A: I am not a mycologist, and my hunch/conclusions may be wrong, but….

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I have no idea whether a human could safely eat the pictured mushroom.

Clearly, however, at least one other fauna species relishes this fungus.

In any event, from a purely human-centric perspective, “edibility” is merely one of an enormous number of relevant descriptors of fungi species’ actual or potential uses.

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In this particular instance, I do not know the answers to the headline’s questions.

Some fungi are “edible, generally”, some are “toxic, generally”, whilst others could be labelled as “it all depends on which fauna species attempts to eat it, and/or on how and when they eat it  and/or on how much of it they eat, and/or on how they prepare it”.

If you look carefully, you can see a little fragment at the bottom, apparently broken off from the pictured coral fungus’s fruiting body.

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The pictured fruiting body is a little bigger than was yesterday’s hero, but it looks rather more “delicate”, less “robust”.

Look closely, however…

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The pictured mushroom is quite large and its uppermost surface unusual…and lovely, to my eyes.

It is also, very evidently, “a pushy bastard”.

Have a close look at what has happened to the stringybark leaf atop the mushroom.

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As was true of the previous post, eagle-eyed viewers should find it easy to see a gnat on one our heroes.

In any event, zooming in/enlarging is recommended – the pictured ‘shrooms surfaces have beautiful, subtly-varied textures and colours.

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…but this post’s petite fruiting bodies are definitely fungal “fruit”.

I think they are examples of so-called “coral fungi”, as were many of the more weird and wonderful fungi we saw in Deep Creek National Park’s old-growth stringybark forest, on an easy, leisurely 75 minute walk.

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The pictured mushroom/toadstool/ fungal fruiting body was very big, very wet.

Unable to support its own weight, it had collapsed.

In terms of its species’ viability, the “collapse” was probably of no consequence whatsoever.

I think it would be analogous to an exhausted salmon, dying after it had made the epic journey upstream and successfully laid eggs or fertilised them: job done.

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