I found these mushrooms the day after a huge storm, the third really big storm this year with some of the highest winds on record. Clumped around a stump by the parking bay at the top of the section, they’d been there for a few days when I saw them but most were still in good condition despite the massive winds and rain. Lola said she’d seen them at the start of the week, but they would have been much smaller then. By the time I saw them they were packed densely together like a miniature alpine village spreading up the side of the stump.
I took the photos quite quickly, this was less than a week after I’d had my appendix out so I didn’t feel like getting down on the ground or spending too long trying to get the right shot. I wished I’d gotten up earlier with the light coming from a lower angle, but I was glad it was overcast so there weren’t any harsh shadows.
After spending time researching what species it was I’ve decided that mushrooms are my new favourite thing. I’m not totally sure I’ve identified these correctly, but the websites below are pretty straightforward with the identifying features they list, as long as there is a picture that matches. The really interesting stuff is how mushrooms grow and work in the ecosystem to break down organic matter, in this case the tree stump that the mushrooms are growing on. The actual fungus, or mycelium is a network of filament-like hyphae that are growing into the stump, using enzymes to dissolve the wood which they consume. When two hyphae in the network connect they can form a knot from which a mushroom grows. So the mycelium in our stump must be made up of hundreds of hypha which are connecting to grow the mushrooms.
One of the things that I’m slightly confused about after the reading I’ve done is that it seems like the whole mycelium network is often referred to as though it’s a single organism, whereas it is composed of many individual hypha which (I think) are genetically distinct. That said, one the hyphae connect and send up mushrooms, the spores of which have the combined DNA, then they’re not so separate anymore. So I’m not sure if I’m reading things wrong, or just that fungi don’t work the same as animals and plants, which is why they have there own kingdom in the biological taxonomy.
Now that I’ve started learning about them I’ve started seeing more fungi around, so expect a few more posts about them!
Here are some good websites about mushrooms:
