this is my contribution to fungifriday by @ewkaw
on january 28th i was walking along the beach at Lillevik taking photos mostly of the rocks, sea ice, sand, etc. it is a natural beach bordering a forest, with no development of any kind and a great place for photos. soon i shall make a general post about my walk on the beach. anyway, it being a beach in january i was not looking for or expecting much in the way of fungi.
but there were a number of logs, mostly driftwood and among them was one rotting hardwood log with these tiny fungi i did not recognize. it being so small i didn't pay it much attention, i took only a single photo and went on searching for more typical beach scenes, of which there were plenty.
back home i reviewed the photo and quickly wished i had taken more shots. using the artsorakel app i positively identified the fungi as fuzzy fungi or splitgill mushroom Schizophyllum commune, i read about it on a few websites:
https://healing-mushrooms.net/schizophyllum-commune
and
https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/schizophyllum-commune.php
and
https://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/feb2000.html
by all means check out these sites. among the info found there is that this species is probably the most widespread fungi of them all. being truly global requires having special adaptations for survival in totally different environments. it is edible, though about as delectable as eating rubbery wood. but more intriguing is the fact that this fungi can infect humans in the lungs, sinuses and in one case fruiting bodies were discovered growing inside a young girls mouth,
as odd as that sounds, this tiny little fungi has even more hard to fathom features. there are approximately 28000 distinct sexes. (no not genders, with pronouns et al...) not that i know anything about fungal reproduction except that it is complicated and nothing like what we are so fond of. though dry, it is well described in the links, especially the last one.
i also learned that fuzzy fungi are fairly rare here in norway. excited having found such a fascinating species, i went back to the beach a few days later to get a closer look and more shots from different angles. in the meantime though, there had been some snowfall and heavy winds with unusally high water levels. there were many changes to the beach with that single storm. sad to say, i searched up and down several times but never found that log.
of course i did manage to get some more nice shots of the beach
and the path to it. since i never found the fuzzy ones, i went looking for other winter mushrooms in this forest and sure enough there were some. i will try to post about them next week