Cat's tongues, Electrified tails, and Oregon hat decor.

It's a while since I've seen cat's tongue fungus, and never more than one at a time. This week, on the Canyonview trail, there were many, mostly on the back side of mossy logs.

Cat's tongue, Pseudohydnum gelatinosum. AKA quivering spine fungus, white tooth jelly, etc. The moss, I think, is Electrified Cat's tail. To go with the tongues.

On another log. I like the delicate scalloped edges. The stalk often extends to the side, towards the woody base.

Red-belted polypore, Fromitopsis pinicola, wearing a hat decorated with Oregon beaked moss.

Orange jelly, on a very wet log. It hadn't been raining, but this forest is very damp, and takes days of sunshine to dry out. Note the tiny, dark blue buttons; probably early lichen settlers.

Orange bubbly

On a wintery grey day, on a grey shore, bounded by grey water and dark greyish logs, a patch of orange-peel brightness calls to me; I scramble and slide over slippery logs to get close to it. Cushions of brilliant jelly bubble out of a soaked log from end to end.

Good enough to eat, maybe*

I've always called this Witches' butter, Tremella mesenterica, going by photos and descriptions in my guide books. Recently, photos on the web are clearer, easier to blow up to see the details; I googled yellow jelly fungus and examined the photos that showed up.

It's probably not Witches' butter, after all. On E-Flora, I found many photos of Dacrymyces chrysospermus, no common name given. The photos match these, and now, knowing what to look for, I see the white basal attachments.

Tremella mesenterica lacks white basal attachment and grows on deciduous wood, besides being different microscopically, (Lincoff). Dacrymyces stillatus is smaller, simpler in form, and different microscopically. Dacrymyces chrysocomus is smaller, yellow, and cushion-shaped to cup-shaped. Dacrymyces capitatus is smaller, yellow, usually grows on hardwoods, and differs microscopically. (E-Flora)

So the witches are out of luck.

*Maybe.

Advice about edibility differs: not edible (Phillips), edible, but should be boiled or steamed not sauteed, (Lincoff). (E-Flora)

Scribblings and pumpkin tarts

Once the fall leaves are busy making mulch on the ground, it's a good time to stop and look at the exposed tree trunks and stumps, each with its own crop of mosses and lichens. The unnamed trail I was following passed through a mixed forest, half evergreens, half deciduous trees, mostly red alder, cottonwood, and various maples.

Black cottonwood; mid-size tree, with its mossy earmuffs.

Two persistent leaves. Cottonwood.

Orange jelly fungus. Looking closely, the surface even has the bumpy texture of an orange peel.

Lipstick cladonia on a rotting log

And these miniature pumpkin pies are a barnacle lichen, Thelotrema lepadinum.

The genus name, "Thelotrema" comes from the Greek for "perforated nipple", which accurately describes the immature "barnacles". "Lepadinum" means "like limpets". Someone got their intertidal critters mixed up.

Red alder, Alnus rubra. With bark barnacles and pencil script lichen.

Red alder, moss, and lichens

Zooming in. The little branching lines are the fruiting bodies of Pencil script lichen, Graphis scripta. 

The pale patches are the main body of the lichen; it's a crust lichen, making smooth writing surfaces on trees in shady woods.

The path. Well travelled, wide enough for the occasional vehicle.

Still round the corner we may meet

A sudden tree or standing stone

That none have seen but we alone.

(From JRR Tolkien, "Walking song")

More birds' nest fungi and orange pinheads

On another swing around Tyee Spit, I stopped to examine a log I'd looked at before, to see how the mini-mushrooms are doing after the winter freeze.

Bird's nest fungus. All of them are full of "eggs".

Ready to spill out. And one is escaping.

I looked over my photos carefully, searching for "eggs" (aka periodoles) outside the cups, but found none. After they've escaped, they will break up and release the spores, which would be too small for me to find.

Orange jelly mushrooms.

These tiny orange dots are speckled on many old logs. They are not witches' butter, nor a look-alike, Dacrymyces palmatus; these are a fixed shape, whereas witches' butter is a blob. And these are all about the same size, no bigger than a dressmaker's pin head; Witches' butter gets much larger. There is a short stalk, and the cap is flattish, becoming concave as it grows.

Zooming in. 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, and 1/3 from the right, there is one seen from the side, showing the stalk.

Also present on this log, meriting another visit; tiny, dust-like greenish black fungi or lichen. Next time the sun comes out, I'll take a good lens down to examine them.

Spreading the word

I was crouched down on the path, peering intently at a wet log, when a woman walking her dog stopped to ask, was I alright?

I showed her the birds' nests.

Bird's eggs, or mini chocolate candies?

The "eggs" are spore cases, waiting their turn to flee the nest.

The nests are "splash-cups". When a raindrop hits one at the right angle, the walls are shaped such that the eggs are expelled to about 1 m away from the cup in some species. (Wikipedia: Nidulariaceae)

And then, there were the pixie cups:

The spores grow in nodes along the lip of the goblet. None visible here.

And the crust:

Unidentified porous fungus, with spiderlings and cream jelly dots.

And, as always, the orange jellies.

Good enough to eat. Really. But too tiny to harvest.

The dog walker thanked me, and went on her way, marvelling. And so the insanity spreads.

On another log, a few more of the rusty-gilled polypores were busy decomposing the wood:

Rusty-gilled polypore, Gloeophyllum sepiarium, about an inch long.

And a young-un.

About two weeks ago, I had seen this sepia mushroom near a few rusty-gills, and wondered what it was. I checked it again this Tuesday, and it had turned brown and black and matched the others.

(First five; Tyee Spit. The youngster is by Woodhus Slough.)