Saturday, November 26, 2016

Funny fungi


I've done this a lot before, photos of fungi, it's that time of year. I've even got a tag for them. That's rather the problem with this kind of blogging, and of life in the countryside, I suppose. The seasons have a habit of coming round again and again with much the same features. Or perhaps it's not a problem. 

Anyway, fungi continue to be weird and wonderful, these were all found in the garden, a more appealing thing to be doing there than sweeping up leaves.






The above growths appear in the holes left in eucalyptus trunks, when branches split and break, as they often do. I wonder why a non-native species should so readily host passing fungi, but I don't really know anything about it.

The frilly orangey ones below, at different stages of their fruition (for mushrooms and toadstools are all fruiting bodies) are all over the ground among the leaf litter:













I've only tended to edit them a bit by deepening the shadows to accentuate the form, but with the two below, as I'd got a bit carried away with the digital zoom on the camera and they looked rather odd and fuzzy, I put a 'lomo' filter on them in Picasa, for fun: 





Change, death and decay, that's fungi for you.


Weirdest and most alien and macabre of all are these earth balls, puffballs' dark doppelgangers:













It's their planet really, theirs and the insects'. We're just passing through.

6 comments:

The Crow said...

All beautiful, in form and color, and in their surroundings. My favorite, made me chuckle, is the fourth from last: looks like a stargazer fish!

Sabine said...

Ancient creatures. Stunning pictures, thank you.

Zhoen said...

I like the glowing umbrellas of the second and third.

Don't forget the microbes...

Catalyst said...

#'s 2 and 3 look like enoki shrooms, which I mistakenly called enojis when SWMBO was telling me about the fungi that adorned her plate of Coconut Chicken from a Thai restaurant she visited today. But she says they're not. I just checked her leftovers and confirmed to her they are not enokis. I said "they're TOADSTOOLS!" And we shared a laugh. But I suspect yours are enokis.

the polish chick said...

i just wish we didn't make such a damn mess of it while we pass through.

the polish chick said...

thought you might enjoy this:

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/11/incredible-fungi-timelapse-from-planet-earth-ii/