This is my contribution to #FungiFriday by
Somehow I seem to be always busy during weekends recently. Actually... I just tell myself that I'm busy, but in fact I do nothing. Well, maybe not nothing, I do some cleaning, laundry and shopping, I've even managed to plant all the offspring of Voodoo Lillies and some type of Oxalis that survived last year (unfortunately all my Oca - edible Oxalis Tuberosa - was effectively killed by aphids). Not feeling too well, but also not sick. I stay up late, even more than usual, and wake up late, so by the time I'm relatively awake, half of the day is already gone.
Whaaa? It's spring already? Let me sleep just five more days...
Last Saturday I decided to break the state of torpor and go visit the forest. After all it is the middle of spring and I haven't gone on a walk since winter. Not the usual forest, because I got up at 2 PM and when I was ready it was already 4 PM, I'd have to drive there, which would take additional time, besides spring is the time Mokrznia lives up to its name the most - do not enter without tall gumboots.
I live pretty close to other forest. It is in fact just a 500 meter wide swath of trees separating subdivision where I live from the busy expressway. I haven't visited it in like 20 years. There are two reasons. First, I can go there any time I want (I have the same problem with books and mangas - if they are online where they can disappear, I read them, but when I buy them in paper, they just pile up on the hassock waiting forever for their turn). Second, that forest is not pleasant - it is messy, for lack of better word. A lot of people go there and litter, but also the forest itself is unarranged, lacks a "main theme" of sort. Despite lack of distinct undergrowth, it is not easy to walk off track, mostly because of bomb craters and tall soil banks - the terrain was some line of defense during World War II, there are even "mushroom" bunkers here and there.
Some are buried in the soil...
...but some can be entered.
Mess is also because old branches and whole trees are left wherever they fall, only sometimes they are cut and a lot of cut pieces are scattered around to rot. One would think such feature means it should give the "old forest vibe", but it is far to young and sparse for that, maybe in 200 years. Besides parts of it are actually cut for wood from time to time.
What a large tree it was. If it was deeper I could fit in that hole.
The variety of trees fit an abandoned park or arboretum more than regular forest. I don't know if people plant them or they just manage to grow themselves after being thrown away, but in the area closer to allotment gardens there are even some fruit trees, thujas and junipers.
Oh, what is it that is trying to impale me on its massive thorns? It gotta be young black locust.
The thing that was decisive in putting me in the shoes and out of the door was actually the messiness of that forest. While I've never seen spring mushrooms, apparently far too rare (hint hint, I actually found one type, I'll post about it next week), all the rotting branches and fallen trees are great for polypores, so I went there expecting to find a lot of them. And I did. Here is my "picture harvest".
Possibly brittle cinder. The photo below is the young stage of the same fungus.
Most likely also turkey tail, just covered in some algae.
Oh, these are actually quite common, but I never paid attention to them since they usually look so inconspicuous.
By far the most common type of dead tree eating fungus I've encountered was tinder conk. Out of all the trees present in the forest they seem to exclusively choose birches. From young, creemy grey, through larger darker grey specimens, up to almost black, old ones.
Some were torn from their host trees.
It looks like that one started growing when the tree was still standing and continued after it fell. Won't be growing anymore though.
Does it qualify as fallen already? The mushrooms apparently don't think so yet.
The moss does not care - a tree trunk or mushroom, both can be used to grow on.
Other than mushrooms that grow for many years, there are first signs on new life, but to be honest I expected more of it.
Am I going to be convallaria or what?
I used to eat wild strawberries from that forest as a kid, but now I prefer not to consume heavy metals :o)
Some typical spring flowers - wood sorrel and wood anemone.
The short visit in the forest woke me up a bit, but apparently I have not learned my lesson and didn't charge phone before leaving home, so after just two hours it showed 2% (somehow I actually made it back home before it died :o) ).
