Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Even a suburban building site can contain examples of how so many living things “really get going in spring.”
Looked at closely, the “eruption” of a fungal fruiting body can be a surprisingly violent event.
A “mushy” can move a deal of earth, along with the “litter” thereon.
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Warren National Park’s Karri-dominated forest is – by Australian standards – a moist, cool environment, albeit definitely not rainforest.
Most visitors mostly look up; for many tourists, the Warren’s big trees are the tallest living things they have ever seen.
It is also a good idea to look down, to pay attention to non-huge things, and to remember that “dead” wood is never lifeless.
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The featured image was taken at 1.05 pm on 20 June 2023, in the final 15 minutes of a walk in Deep Creek National Park’s old growth stringybark forest.
This particular coral fungus fruiting body (and its particular positioning, midst leaf-litter – it was another “pushy bastard”/ “remover of obstacles”… or, in its case, an uplifter of them) was especially beautiful, I thought…and still do.
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I had never previously seen mushrooms with such spectacularly shiny, exquisitely coloured tops.
If you zoom in on/enlarge them, you should be able to enjoy some Dali-esque, distorted reflections of the old-growth stringybark forest’s canopy.
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Q: What does the appearance of this mushroom tell us about how it achieved its position and dimensions, as at 1. 07 pm on 20 June 2023?
A: I am not a mycologist, and my hunch/conclusions may be wrong, but….
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I have no idea whether a human could safely eat the pictured mushroom.
Clearly, however, at least one other fauna species relishes this fungus.
In any event, from a purely human-centric perspective, “edibility” is merely one of an enormous number of relevant descriptors of fungi species’ actual or potential uses.
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In this particular instance, I do not know the answers to the headline’s questions.
Some fungi are “edible, generally”, some are “toxic, generally”, whilst others could be labelled as “it all depends on which fauna species attempts to eat it, and/or on how and when they eat it and/or on how much of it they eat, and/or on how they prepare it”.
If you look carefully, you can see a little fragment at the bottom, apparently broken off from the pictured coral fungus’s fruiting body.
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The pictured fruiting body is a little bigger than was yesterday’s hero, but it looks rather more “delicate”, less “robust”.
Look closely, however…
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The pictured mushroom is quite large and its uppermost surface unusual…and lovely, to my eyes.
It is also, very evidently, “a pushy bastard”.
Have a close look at what has happened to the stringybark leaf atop the mushroom.
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As was true of the previous post, eagle-eyed viewers should find it easy to see a gnat on one our heroes.
In any event, zooming in/enlarging is recommended – the pictured ‘shrooms surfaces have beautiful, subtly-varied textures and colours.
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