Wednesday, August 13, 2025

Explore Outdoors ~ Funky Fungi!

 
 
 We had a lot of rain in June and early July, and the pile of wood chips hosted quite the convention of mushrooms. But one day when I walked over to check them out, I noticed that many of them seemed to be wearing "hats" atop their caps.
 
iNaturalist came to the rescue and identified the brain-like growth as another fungus, a parasite called Collybia Clouds (Syzygospora mycetophila).

 

 
I wondered: did it grow beneath the mushroom cap as well?
So I looked.
Yep!  
 
And then I found one of the collybia clouds all by itself... I guess it had finished off its host mushroom. A week later I checked the chip pile and all was gone!
 
With mushrooms, you've got to be looking when they fruit! 

 
What cool fungi will you find this week?


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