Mushroom madness continues. It may stink but no one can say it’s not elegant.
Yesterday’s wanderings brought me to my first encounter with an Elegant Stinkhorn.

Elegant Stinkhorn – Mutinus elegans

Actually it was a pair, both had just passed their prime and were laying on the ground. All their essential features remained except for being erect. It stinks bulbous base color bands – white at the base turning pink/red towards the tip green slime on the stalk hole in the tip hollow structure The mushroom’s fetid odor attracts insects like flies that feed on the foul smelling slimy green spore mass. I wonder why my National Audubon field guide is mum about the edibility of this mushroom since it is not poisonous. Other sources state the immature bulb / base is edible although it’s rather tasteless. Another common name for this mushroom is ‘Devil’s Dipstick’. I don’t even want to ask what he’s checking the level of or where he’s sticking it.

finger licking good

The genus name Mutinus refers to a Roman phallic deity so it’s understandable how a very similar looking member of the family got it’s name, The Dog Stinkhorn – Mutinus caninus. Not that I pay attention to such things but it does look like a dog’s thing-a-ma-jig even without a hole at the tip.

…and now for something completely different.

I tweaked my template in order to display wider images used as desktop backgrounds. Now I can use Picasa’s link generator without having to make multiple copies of the same image in different sizes for use on the blog.

The image is linked to the full sized image on my Picasa Wallpaper Album. From there you can browse the rest of images

AKA: the Blushing Bracket.

The underside lends itself to both common names. The pore surface looks like a maze and has a tendency to bruise reddish / brown / salmon when handled.

Daedaleopsis confragosa

The upper surface is wrinkled and concentrically ridged. It grows on dead wood and occasionally from wounds on living deciduous trees. Very rarely on conifers. The thin maze flat polypore mushroom grows up to 6 inches across.

The pore surface:
look close and you can see it starting to blush just above my thumb.

My field guides say it’s a tough mushroom but they never mentioned how rubbery a fresh one is. They can be folded without breaking, just like my wife’s pancakes.

They are tough. It takes a good bit of effort to rip one apart. I had to put the camera down and use both hands. I think this is the main reason they’re not considered edible. It would be like eating a rubber sink stopper.

I hear crickets chirping in the background. Exciting huh?
Well it was for me – I rarely get to identify the mushrooms I find.

Speaking of crickets and backgrounds: I’ve linked the cricket image to my Picasa background album.

The good news – no more multiple copies of wallpaper images in different sizes.
The bad news – I have a choice of 400 or 640 pixel width I can display. The 400 is too small for my taste and the 640 too large for my blog template. Looks like I’m going to have to renovate the template again. (if I can remember how I managed to do it in the first place)

Many people believe crickets chirp by rubbing their legs together. After looking at the photo that seems improbable. Crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together. The sound is made by rubbing a special organ (stridulatory) covered with teeth (serration) at the bottom of each wing. Only males chirp. The warmer they are the faster they chirp

Cricket is also a game I’ll never understand.
I guess that’s because the only real exposure I had to the game was watching Monty Python skits back in the day.

One look and you can see how these tiny mushrooms got their name
…but you’ll have to get closer than this to see.

White Bird Nest Fungus – Crucibulum laeve

birds nest mushrooms growing in mulch

This species of birds nest mushroom seems to particularly love the dirty bedding I bring home from the St. Lawrence University sheet pile. OK, if ya got a bit confused there, let me explain. It’s not student’s sheets but rather the bedding used at the horse stable. They use small wood shavings and chips to bed the horses and once the ‘secret ingredient’ is added they pile it into a small mountain. When I get it, the bedding is semi composted and makes a great mulch. It also makes a great mushroom compost. I often get small puffballs or birds nests in very large colonies, numbers not area wise.

The nests can be single, sparsely grouped or tightly packed together. Groups will often have a yellow hue about them. I’m only guessing but it looks like the eggs start yellow and turn white with age.

Immature mushrooms also contribute to the yellow look. With their caps still on they start off cute as a button, all fuzzy and orange/yellow. Only when they get older will the caps come off.

An immature birds nest mushroom

With a macro view you can see the ‘nest’ is a ‘cup’ and the ‘eggs’ are ‘seeds’. In turn the seeds are really spore pods attached to the cup by a tiny cord. There they sit held waiting for the rain.

eggs smeggs - spores smores

When a raindrop falls into the cup the funiculus begins.
When the pods are pushed out of the cup the funiculus (cord) is stretched to the limit and breaks. The frayed cord ends are sticky and attach themselves to whatever they land on. Another macro view shows there’s not much to the cords, they look like little bumps in the center of the pods.

I'll take a dozen of those donuts

The next generation stuck on a tiny wood shaving.
I know, it’s not the Enterprise, but what did you expect?

Oh Deer, now for something completely different.

take a second look

Why are there no Hostas in the photo?