Been on a fungi hunt in a woodland I hadn’t visited in a while.
The path was all blocked with bushes and prickly vines.
But I managed to duck and push through, and here’s what I found!
Nothing very pretty, but a few new ones I hadn’t encountered before.
On top of a log, I spotted something I initially thought was a bird dropping:
But looking closer…
…it turned out to be a jelly-like substance.
It was attached to the log, and I believe it’s Black Witch’s Butter (Exidia glandulosa).
Next, I came across a group of trees that seemed to be glowing gold on one side, possibly due to rust lichen beginning to spread across them.
Rust lichen is a reliable indicator of north on trees and can act as a natural lichen compass."
Then I spotted a fallen branch dotted with what looked like Hazel Woodwart (Hypoxylon fuscum).
The surrounding trees were speckled in white, which I initially thought was white lichen.
…but as I looked closer, I noticed concentric rings, so it’s likely the Concentric Boulder Lichen.
In the middle of all these trees, I found a stump with mushrooms growing on it. The closer you look, the more hypnotic they become.
They look like Crowded Parchment Mushrooms, a species of leaf fungus.
Finally, my brother in the Philippines sent me a photo of a fungus growing on an ipil-ipil tree trunk in my mum’s backyard. At first, I thought it might be an Artist's Conk.
But the pinkish band suggests it could be Fomitopsis pinicola, the Red-Belted Conk. It’s a beautiful bracket, almost ornamental in its age rings.
That's my share for today 
I hope you all had a good day!
Mariah 🍄😊