Frozen and thawed mushrooms ~ FungiFriday by @ewkaw

almost 2 years ago

Last Friday, I tried posting some recent photos of mushrooms. Alas, I posted from my phone, and the images were not visible properly. It was a real pity, so I decided to expand last week's story a bit.

The unusually warm weather continues. It's not warm In absolute terms but usually at this time of the year the temperature drops to 10-20 degrees below freezing. And there tends to be plenty of snow. Now it's mostly precipitation in the form of rain or sleet, and ice and LOTS of mud.

There have been several sunny days this month, and there are some patches of ground without snow. This is very unusual for this time of the year, and it gives the impression that winter is coming to its end already.

Yet, I know that nature is playing tricks on us. Spring is still far away. The first flowers will pop up in mid-April at the earliest, and it will only take until May before the branches of the trees start turning green again.

The earlier-than-usual arrival of frosty weather last November and the warm period now managed to preserve some mushrooms (and plants), and now they are thawing during the day.

I came across something unusual. I suspect there’s some fungus in this white thing.

And then there was one more weird thing. It reminds me of the desert rose gemstone, though they don't grow on tree trunks.

As I said, some parts of the forest look like spring.

When indeed, in the shadows, there’s still just snow and some branches visible. In this photo, you can see blueberry plants that have dropped their leaves. Not so pretty. I normally don't share such bland phone snapshots, and this is partly why in winter I'm rarely taking many photos in winter unless it's sunny.

And also, the lake has frozen. The ice tends to be several centimetres thick. I haven’t measured it here but it was safe to take a shortcut on it.

Continuing on to this week, I found some more thawed mushrooms. They must have been quite soft to touch. I usually like touching mushrooms to test how hard/soft/bouncy/rubbery/whatever they feel like. Of course, only those that I know are safe to touch. Though, I'd be curious to touch, e.g., an amanita through a glove and see if it's rubbery or bouncy. Sometimes I get mean and tap bouncy ones to watch them resonate back and forth. Don't worry, I'm careful not to damage them.

On the bark of a tree, there was an interesting family of small tree mushrooms. They were contrasting nicely against the lichens.