Mycology

Usually show up in the garden a couple weeks before they do in the woods.

I started out as a hobby mycologist but I live in Canada and mushrooms can be in short supply during the winter. I took up amateur lichenology to fill the void but I quickly became consumed by them, there was so much I didn't know and the uncharted-territory aspect of it took hold of me. Now I photograph way more lichens than mushrooms and I've started to do a bit of public speaking for my mycology group on lichens and their ecology. I am just an amateur though so I'm not an expert by any means. Pic: Stereocaulon sp. The link is below.

https://mander.xyz/c/Lichen

I normally grow things like pioppino, lions mane and oysters, this is my first time growing a polypore. It took a long time, many months haha. I think this was inoculated back in november and I just got around to fruiting a few weeks ago. Lots of spore samples to put under the microscope, let me tell you.

Went out to take a look at some massive colonies of Xanthoparmelia growing on a rock face. 5% potassium hydroxide test results in a nice deep yellow, almost green stain on the upper cortex. The medula is also K+, turning a deep blood red/orange. I blotted the soaked lichen on some paper and got this beautiful golden-rod ink. This ink was produced from less than a cm^2^ of lichen and a couple drops of KOH. I would love to experiment more given the abundance of this lichen and the small amount of material needed to produce the ink. This photo was taken 24hrs after staining the paper but I'd need to further test the colour fastness.

Edit: I am conscious of ethical harvesting practices for lichens, I normally only harvest for identification purposes and even then I try to only collect samples detached from the substrate.

Red tree brain fungus, love to see this guy. Typically only find it on fallen branches that are very soggy but not super rotted.

Beautiful lichen I don't see a lot, its probably very common in my area but just not in my normal spots. Apothecia are striking, hope I find more.

I have a site I run on amateur mycology/lichenology. citizenmycology.ca

Snapped a pic of this cutie awhile ago. Beautiful.

Made a focus stack of some stick I found while on a walk, I guess my lens was a bit dirty so the dirty spot got repeated a few times since it was hand held
@[email protected]
#macro | #lichen | #zerenestacker
#laowa | #stick | #sonya7riii

The first thing this fungus does to its newly infected victim is to take over the insects mind. A zombie is created. the insect is forced to climb up and up. Eventually stopping, it latches on as tight as possible to the nearest branch. The insect will never move again.

Now the processes can really start, the fungi fully devours the insect interior. using the energy gathered, long spore producing structures are extruded out of the insects body.

like little ships sailing to colonise new land, thousands of spores float away on ever drifting air currents. the cycle continues

Found in New Zealand

Tree species: rimu, Dacrydium cupressinum

Wasp species: german wasp, Vespula germanica

Fungus species: genus and species currently unknown by me, any info would be much appreciated.

Note the fly in the bottom left corner.

I assume it must be quite smelly to attract that?

Definitely in my top 3 favourite genera of lichenized fungi. So photogenic too, I always get down on my knees for pixie cups (reindeer lichen too, if I'm being honest).

Just wondering about more local communities and resources that pertain directly to my geographical area. Most resources are generalised, or specific to north america from what i've seen

Books especially appreciated.

Found growing on concrete but I also often find it on metal. Anyone have any idea why it was changed back to Xanthoria elegans in Macrolichens of the PNW?

Abstract

For nearly 450 million years, mycorrhizal fungi have constructed networks to collect and trade nutrient resources with plant roots1,2. Owing to their dependence on host-derived carbon, these fungi face conflicting trade-offs in building networks that balance construction costs against geographical coverage and long-distance resource transport to and from roots3. How they navigate these design challenges is unclear4. Here, to monitor the construction of living trade networks, we built a custom-designed robot for high-throughput time-lapse imaging that could track over 500,000 fungal nodes simultaneously. We then measured around 100,000 cytoplasmic flow trajectories inside the networks. We found that mycorrhizal fungi build networks as self-regulating travelling waves—pulses of growing tips pull an expanding wave of nutrient-absorbing mycelium, the density of which is self-regulated by fusion. This design offers a solution to conflicting trade demands because relatively small carbon investments fuel fungal range expansions beyond nutrient-depletion zones, fostering exploration for plant partners and nutrients. Over time, networks maintained highly constant transport efficiencies back to roots, while simultaneously adding loops that shorten paths to potential new trade partners. Fungi further enhance transport flux by both widening hyphal tubes and driving faster flows along ‘trunk routes’ of the network5. Our findings provide evidence that symbiotic fungi control network-level structure and flows to meet trade demands, and illuminate the design principles of a symbiotic supply-chain network shaped by millions of years of natural selection.

Found over the fall of 2024.

These tiny mushrooms popped up in my seed starter tray. The cap of the biggest one, the one in the center seems to have unraveled into this long white string. Does anyone know why it did that or what kind of mushroom this might be?

A few mushrooms I found when doing the Giro del Monviso in Italy/France last September. I generally am not good at recognising mushrooms, but I was with a friend with whom we discussed some features and made hypothesis of the easier ones. Would appreciate any further tips on identification.

Earthballs are a bit like puffballs except they have a thicker skin and tend to be inedible or poisonous (though some say it's that they just "spoil" so quickly that you almost never find them in a state of supposed edibility).

Earthballs often tricky to tell apart from each other without a microscope or seeing them at multiple stages in their lifecycle but the Leopard Earthball has a few good tells like the brown cracking scales on the surface and the rapid red staining when it's cut in half.

If it's dark enough the tips glow faintly like a candle that's just been snuffed out.

You can see the glow in this blacklight photo I took (sorry if it's hard to see, I didn't turn off color correction on my phone).

The plant it's growing on is a dead piece of a Mountain Ash/Rowan shrub which seems to be bouncing back from whatever killed that branch.