Sunday 27 January 2008

Lichens and fungi

This weekend I have thrown more weighty logs and chunks of tree trunk onto the trailer than my back appreciates. I did remember to bend my knees, but we are talking the equivalent of heaving the weight of hundreds of smallish persons here. Imagine carting every school child and all their teachers at your local primary school, and you just about have it.
I took lots of standing still and admiring the view breaks, and sat in the tractor cab as I drove from one heap of logs to the next for longer than was really necessary. I also gawked at a couple of extraordinarily beautiful specimens of lichen.
The vibrant purple one was hiding at the bottom of the log pile, really damp and dark. I worried that exposing it to light might mean the end of my aspirations to be the next Alexander Fleming, but as I don't own any petri dishes I took a photo instead.



The one that looks like orange ears is some sort of cup fungus rather than a lichen; my hunt for elucidation suggests it might be scarlet cup fungus.





And then there was this nifty little trio; as poisonous looking bunch of fungi as you would wish, all phallic and starting to develop a gelatinous sheen.

5 comments:

rilly super said...

I was going to put some toadstool pictures on the blog too mopsa, but there wasn't mush room, sigh

and shame on anyone who came to this page by googling 'phallic' *blushes*

Whispering Walls said...

Stunning

Eurodog said...

They give me goose pimples. Goose bumps even.

Mopsa said...

Rilly - go and get yourself a new joke book! I will check on my hits for you and see if "phallic mushroom head" brings any unsavoury visitors.I could name and shame?

Thank you WW.

As long as the goose bumps don't turn into scarlet cup fungi you'll be fine Eurowoof.

Anonymous said...

love the colours and shapes mopsa