Fans, eggs, and a yellow ball

 At the edge of a little woodland, a recently-fallen dead branch came down with its crop of fungi.

One end of the branch.

Seen on this end: Rusty-Gilled polypore, keeping a lookout, two birds' nests full of "eggs", the beginnings of a liverwort, another birds' nest, empty, and that yellow thing, unidentified.

3 Rusty-Gilled polypore fans. Gloeophyllum saepiarium.

These are all tiny; the branch is little more than 3 cm. across at its widest point. The birds' nests are a fraction of that.

Birds' nests, yellow ball, and what is that poking out from under the bark beside it?

I can't identify that tiny, pinhead yellow ball with a white foot. The colour of orange jelly or witches butter, but so perfectly rounded, and a bit fuzzy looking.

UPDATE: I've been told that the yellow ball is an immature birds' nest, a younger version of the two above it.

Zooming in on a bird's nest. Looks like a bowl of beans in broth on a frilly placemat.

The "eggs" are spore cases, peridioles. When it rains, drops will splash them out to start new nests. One is already freed, to the left of the twisted nest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Al borde de un bosquecito, una rama caída, ya muerta, trae su carga de una variedad de hongos.

Foto #1: Un extremo de la rama. Con un hongo poliporo "de agallas rojizas" que mantiene vigilancia sobre el camino, dos hongos nido llenos de "huevos", una hepática apenas empezada, otro nido de ave, pero sin huevos, y esa pelotita amarilla que no pude identificar. Todo esto muy pequeñito; la rama, a lo más, mide 3 cm. de diámetro.

Foto #2: Otros tres abanicos del poliporo, Gloeophyllum saepiarium.

Foto #3: Los hongos nido, la pelotita amarilla, y ¿qué será esa cosa que se asoma desde debajo de la corteza a la izquierda?

No puedo identificar esa pelota amarilla. Tiene el color de jalea anaranjada, Dacrymyces chrysospermus, o de mantequilla de brujas, Tremella mesenterica, pero tan perfectamente redonda, y con ese base blanco.

*Puesta al dia: Ahora me han dicho que la pelotita amarilla es uno de los mismos hongos nido, en su forma inmadura.

Foto #4: Un hongo nido en macro. Parece un plato de caldo con frijoles grandes, sobre un mantelito individual. Los "huevos" son sacos de esporas, llamados periodolos. Cuando llueve, gotas de lluvia botarán estos periodolos fuera del recipiente, listos para empezar nuevos nidos. Se ve uno, ya libre, al lado izquierdo del nido torcido.

Chicken and egg mushrooms

And more mushrooms. Mystery mushrooms; impossible to identify by sight alone. These are all growing on rotting (or very rotted) stumps, among Douglas-firs.

They look like fried eggs to me. Sunny side up. These are inside a disintegrating stump.

The stump itself is interesting. Here, just beside the mushroom's hole, are tracks of some largish bark borer, long gone.

Deep inside another small stump. The mushrooms look like soggy Turkey tail mushrooms. Very soggy, though, very soft. Blurry, even to the naked eye.

There are several species that cluster like this, in the same habitat: rotting wood, especially Douglas-fir.

Which came first, the mushroom that rotted the wood, or the rotted wood that fed the mushrooms?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Y más hongos. Hongos misterio, ya que no los pude identificar por la vista. Todos están creciendo en troncos podridos, algunos muy podridos, bajo árboles de abeto de Douglas.

Los primeros me parecen huevos fritos, sin voltear. Están dentro de un tronco ya listo para convertirse en polvo mojado. El tronco, de por si, también merece un vistazo; la segunda foto muestra las huellas de algún insecto que hace túneles bajo la corteza, que ya desapareció hace mucho.

Los hongos de la tercera foto estaban dentro de otro tronco bien podrido. Se parecen a los hongos comunes "cola de guajolote", pero remojados, aún en un dia de sol, suaves, borrosos a la vista.

Hay varios hongos que crecen en grupos apretados como los de la cuarta foto, todos en el mismo habitat: madera de coníferos podrida, especialmente en madera de abeto de Douglas.

El misterio del huevo y la gallina: ¿cuál vino primero; el hongo que pudrió la madera, o la madera podrida que alimentó al hongo?

More white stuff

I've paged through my mushroom and slime mold books over and over, and can't identify these.

On the underside of a log

This was the largest of a series of patches of a white and cream growth, soft and moist, with pink spots in the thicker areas. Fungus? Slime mold? I don't know.

A closer look. 

And then there's this:

White and green powders

Many of the stumps and trees along the Canyonview Trail are covered with a fine white or green powder, spreading itself sometimes over the whole stump. In the photo above, it's even growing on the spider webs. Another one I can't identify.

On a small, broken twig lying on the ground, I found these white mushrooms growing:

Top view. Fanning out from a side stalk. The moss shows the size.

And the view from underneath. The curve at the left is my thumb.

What are these?

Upside-down mushrooms? With the hyphae out in the open?

Or something else? A slime mold, maybe?

They are tiny: compare to the size of the moss at the end of the stick. They were on broken twigs on the ground under the shelter of old logs.

 More. Most were like this; radiating spikes bursting out of the twigs.

All messed up

I came across this mushroom growing on the remains of a log in the Oyster Bay forest.

One mushroom, two, or more?

The main part of the mushroom is at least a foot across (reminder to self: carry a tape measure!). The chunks to the lower right may be a second specimen. The flesh was solid and dry to the touch, slightly softer than the shelf fungi that grow on our trees, off-white with a greenish tinge.

Even up close, the only scents noticeable were of old wood, drying fir needles, and moisture.

There was no sign of slug feasting, but the mushroom was badly broken up. This is off the trail and there was no sign of human footprints. What broke the mushroom? A bear, maybe?

I have no idea what mushroom this is. Do you?

Found them!

The toothy yellow zucchini mushrooms, that is.

Former mystery mushroom.

I had moved on to process another batch of mushroom photos from the same campsite, some distance away; quite different mushrooms, I thought.

One of the club mushroom family; looks like a funnel or a vase.

This one was a good 6 inches tall, the tallest of a clump of similar mushrooms. And, looking at the group photos I had, I discovered some of the yellow toothy ones in the background.

See it there, hiding in the centre, by the rotting log? And a slightly bigger one, on the far right?

So the mystery is solved. The yellow zucchini with teeth is a youngster, a Turbinellus floccosus, aka Gomphus floccosus, aka Cantharellus floccosus. (Everyone's agreed on the floccosus, at least.)

I found a photo by Tim Wheeler, identified as T. floccosus and with the young ones present, matching mine, here. And here's a youngster in E-Flora BC. The photographer took a series of photos of the same mushroom; here it is as an adult.

Same group of mushrooms, moving to the right.

These grow up to about 8 inches high. Although they look like the edible Chantarelles and the delicious Clavariadelphus truncatus, they have no distinctive taste, and cause digestive upset and liver damage to some people. We didn't attempt to taste them. Better safe than sorry.

Where we found these.

GPS coordinates: 49.91553, -126.62502