Friday 19 February 2016

The Secret Life of Fungi

I saw this fungus on a fallen tree in Colinton Dell (where much of the dead wood is allowed to lie, offering great places for fungi and lower plants to grow and invertebrates to hide away!). It's very noticeable with its large brown toadstools.

But less noticeable is the network of dark thread like structures you can see in the photo above. This is the mycelium and is present all the time, even when the toadstools have died back. The toadstool is the fruiting body and in many species is only present for a short period of time, until it has shed its spores at which point it dies back. The mycelium on the other hand, endures! Many fallen trees are full of mycelia.


I'm not sure what species this fungus is, perhaps velvet shank or brown stew fungus. If anyone can recognise it from these photos, please let me know in the comments!

9 comments:

Jenn Jilks said...

I love fungus, we are buried in snow now, though!

sage said...

I would like to be able to identify fungi and mushrooms... Nice photo.

Birgitta said...

Like your fungus photos and your header too!

Lowcarb team member said...

Aren't fungi brilliant - so many shapes and colours.

All the best Jan

Sandy said...

Have you tried doing an image search in Google? That works for me once in a while.
It looks like what we call Chicken of the woods here.

Leora said...

Thanks for the fungus lesson! I know little - now I know a little more.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Hi Sandy, the thing is velvet shank and brown stew fungus look very very similar in any photo I've seen...

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

I Like looking at fungi and I've seen something similar on trees ... But there are always so many look alikes . T(that is why I don't do edible wild mushrooms). The good ones always have a poisonous twin. Beautiful to look at though, as yours is!

Crafty Green Poet said...

Sallie, i don't generally eat wild fungi either, there are a couple of species I recognise for definite, which are worth eating, but the rest, no, i leave them!