Hola, setero! It was a while since I did a post in my favorite community and presented you my macros, dear Fungi Lovers ... the reason is simple, same as always: I have no new interesting finds and photos; generally speaking, I did not open the 2022 mushroom season. By the way, throughout all of the June we had extremely hot weather with no rains - which is not the best option for mushroom growth.
But still, I have something in my pocket. The material was properly "matured" and "hoarded", so today I'm happy to present it; hope the visuals will please you, although of course not necessarily you will consider it "fancy".
Some lichens and matured puff-balls (already burst and released out their spores) on an old tinder fungus. For me personally they look like a flock of monsters, I tend to see some monster fish heads here. Picturesque! -- not like the one below...
What will you think of this? Mind you, this is not a macro; the object was not miniature: about 12-15cm. I found it in the forest, and at first I did not understand what it was. First of all, I pointed my finger at it, and ... left a trace in it (a deepening in the left side of the object -- check the close-up crop on the right).
A small "crust" on the outside and oatmeal or dough inside, no certain smell (cant say anything about its taste -- I didnt dare to taste it). Of course I thought about mushrooms ... I was intrigued, what kind of fungus it could be?
During this walk, I stumbled upon a similar natural formation several times, but I didn’t poke my finger at them anymore, one experiment was enough, hehe. Also did not take more captures, one was quite enough.
My subconscious was definitely working on the issue, and some time later reminded me that last year in the same forest, but already at the end of summer - I found an unusual thing, which looked to me like a mushroom.
Below are more photographs of this fungi from last summer, I certainly did not conduct a spore analysis, but the similarities are obvious to me. If last year I found old, already ripe and dried fungi, with black spores inside, then this year -- I encountered a fresh, juicy, growing organisms ... not yet fully matured. Compare photos and find internal similarities... the white crust at their skin, and the gritty, black-sand-like grains inside.
Photo with my folding knife, which I give to understand the scale. This fungus was not very large, a lump less than 6-7 cm in height.
Yes, such dough does not look attractive in photographs - so I will show you some more photos from last year. I made them at the end of the day, when the soft lighting of the "magic hour" helped me.
As soon as I touched it with my finger, the outer crust of a reddish-cream color crumbled into dust - this fine dust stuck to my finger like flour, like pollen from the wings of a butterfly ...
In this photo, the mushroom resembles a wasp's nest, a wad of wasp-made wood paper. The nature is amazing!
Soon after that, the evening sun shifted, the stump fell into the shade, and my pictures stopped turning out in an interesting way... here's the last photo from this stump.
Last year, looking at this dry crust of butterfly pollen on my fingers, I had no idea about the identification of this fungus. Well, this year, after my finger experiment :) it became clear that in front of me was a slime mold mushroom, one of the types of slime molds...
So, what specie exactly it was? I dont know that still. My closest assumption is, it can be Mucilago crustacea, but that is under question. It is not forageble and not edible, and not very much foto-friendly, thats for sure!
There are several more photographs of similar slime mushrooms in my archive, although I very rarely find and photograph them. I encountered this mushroom at a swamp, where it grew on a sphagnum moss. I identified this specie as Reticularia Lycoperdon, apparently, under question.
| location: | Vyritza, Russia | 2021-2022 | natural lighting |
| camera/lens: | Canon 5D | Sigma 150mm 2.8 | raw-conv |
| f 2.8 | t 1/125 | ISO 500 |
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