There was not much in the way of actual macro fungi (mushrooms) that I could find this Friday. But I took some shots of some cool lichen which is a fungi..sort of. Lichen is a symbiotic organism consisting of a fungi and an alga (or a cyanobacteria occasionally). The fungi essentially encases its preferred species of algae and consumes the nutrients that the algae produces from photosynthesis. In turn, the fungi part of the lichen protects the algae from harsh climatic conditions and sunlight with its chitinous cell walls.
A typical "greenshield" lichen above (Subfamily Parmelioidea)
Lichen are very successful group of organisms and are found all over the world. There are many evolutionarily distinct groups of fungi that "lichenize". They come in a wide variety of shapes including tufts, powdery, jelly-like, and wispy tufts.
It is possible to separate the fungi from the algae and culture them separately but the fungi doesn't grow into its lichenous form without the presence of the specific algae with which it coevolved.
Most lichen species consist of 1 pair of fungi and algae species combination. However, the same species of lichenizing fungi can have different algae symbionts depending which part of its geographic it is located in. This is rare.
On this lichen you can see black discs which are the reproductive part of the lichen. They are called apothecia and can come in different morphological forms.
Note the black apothecia discs.
Then there is the whole difficulty in identifying them to species which I have in no way mastered...maybe some day!
My contribution to #FungiFriday by
@ewkaw