Going dotty

I'm seeing spots before my eyes. Orange spots. I've been searching for a match to these miniature mushrooms:

Orange discs, 3 - 5 mm across, on fallen conifer branch.

Among hundreds of photos of orange and yellow blobs, plates, cups, discs, the ones that looked most like these were the Yellow Fairy Cups, Bisporella citrina. Except that the guide book, and Wikipedia, and E-Flora all said that they grow on hardwoods, deciduous trees. And this branch is definitely a conifer.

Small, slightly concave discs, bright orange, paler on the underside. There seems to be hints of a bit of stalk.

I looked again, read descriptions of anything that looked remotely similar, and came back to Yellow Fairy Cups. And found a few references to them on conifers.

E-Flora says they grow on dead hardwood, but they have one photo taken in a conifer forest. MushroomExpert.com says they're on hardwood and conifers. Central Coast Biodiversity puts them on both hardwood and conifers.

Except: nothing about fungi is ever easy. They are supposed to grow on rotting logs and stumps, not twigs. Maybe nobody told them. Or maybe they're something else altogether.

However, the search was not useless. I learned a new word. Erumpent.

bursting forth or through a surface.
"perithecia separately or collectively erumpent"

A better, more accurate word for the way fungi emerge from the wood they live in. And a reminder that these small or large "shrooms" and conks are just the fruiting bodies pushing their way out into the open, but only a small part of a large organism, sometimes spreading through a whole tree or even a whole forest.

(Also, it's a Harry Potter word: " ... a rhinoceros with a roundish body. It was a powerful creature, with a thick hide capable of repelling most curses and charms, a single long horn, and a thick tail. They were treated with great caution and respect by African wizards and witches.")

Half-hidden mice

Douglas fir cones:

Pseudotsuga menziesii. Always identifiable by the three-pronged bracts.

I like Douglas fir: it's not a fir, nor, as some people call it, a spruce, but belongs in its own genus, Pseudotsuga, meaning "false hemlock". And it's always easy to identify by its unique cones. The bracts are, according to legend, the feet and tail of tiny deer mice hiding underneath the scales.

These mice are long and skinny. (Older cones, really.)

The cones are the only ones you will find in the Northwest with three-pointed bracts sticking out of the scales.  Unlike the true firs, the cones hang down rather than standing up on the branch. Also unlike the true firs, the Douglas Fir drops its cones to the ground intact. (From Northwest Conifers)

A multitude of one

Mushrooms grow on soil, on mossy rocks, on fir cones, on old logs. In Cathedral Grove, we passed many growing on tree trunks.

The stalk grows out horizontally, then curves upwards.

All of these (all of the photos) seem to be the same species; creamy gills, white rings, smooth brown, flattish cap.

They grow out of crevices in the old bark.

The stalks on these are much darker, and the caps are freckled.

More freckled caps, growing on a mossy trunk.

Showing off the gills.

In my little guide, Common Mushrooms of the Northwest, I found only one that seems to match; the Honey Mushrooms, Armillaria mellea complex. (12 related species). (Probably Armillaria ostoyae.)

These grow on standing wood, or buried wood near conifers and the mushrooms we see are a small part of the huge hidden body of the fungus; one individual may cover hundreds of acres, spreading from tree to tree. It is possible that all the ones we saw on the walk through Cathedral Grove were outcrops of the same organism.