After doing some quick work in the city, I decided to visit the woods just outside the suburban neighborhood situated along the road that leads back to my hometown.
I was there very early in the morning. It was pretty cold, and just as expected, I found a bit of frost along the way. But that wasn't all I found on that walk. Quite unexpectedly, I came across some mushrooms as well.
This is a post about mushrooms and frost, arguably the two most interesting things in the woods in my area, at this time of the year.
It all started under the pine trees ...
... where I noticed this small, white mushroom surrounded by brown needles and foliage fallen from various shrubs that grow around the trees. I'm not sure about the species, but this could be the Strobilurus trullisatus, a fungus that grows on decaying pieces of conifers.
This empty shell of the Pomatias elegans snail was photographed a meter from the mushroom.
A bit further I encounter another small mushroom, the Mycena adscendens.
Some minutes later, I found a trio of mushrooms that grew on the decaying pine cone.
Mycena seynii is a species that grows mainly on pine cones. It can be also found on rotting wood from the same kind of tree, but those findings are relatively rare.
The atmosphere was pretty gloomy in the shade under the trees. The light was pretty low. That's why I took the first couple of photographs with the flash. That's why the shutter speed was high enough and I could shoot with the hand-held camera. But ...
... the scene looked much better when seen in natural light. So I put the camera on the humid ground ...
... and took a few more shots with different settings, that were including a pretty low shutter speed.
The fruiting bodies in this photograph just started to develop. In the following shot ...
... you can see three completely developed mushrooms. After some more walking around the forest ...
... I came across this old, rotting trunk. On it, I found two minuscule, but interesting and photogenic organisms.
Some minuscule Mycena mushroom that I wasn't able to identify ...
... and a lovely little snail. The Discus rotundatus. The snail was hidden inside its flat, coin-like shell.
After some more rambling under the pines ...
... the narrow path covered with gravel and needles fallen from the trees brought me to the open meadows.
At the edge of the forest, in the shade of the last line of trees, the grass was covered with frost.
I like these little crystals very much.
The natural phenomena related to low temperatures are kind of exotic here where I live.
The winter is pretty short with very few really cold days. The snow is a rarity that appears once in a decade or two. So this elusive morning frost is my entire winter wonderland.
As the sun was rising ...
... the frost was melting and turning into dew.
If you don't start your day at dawn, you won't be aware of these magic moments of winter. As the frost was disappearing in front of my eyes ...
... I walked back into the woods.
There I found more mushrooms ...
... on the rotting piece of a pine tree.
I can't tell you the exact species. I know quite a few similar-looking yellow-orange mushrooms from this area, and the fruiting bodies in these photographs resemble all of them but do not look exactly like any other species that I clearly recognize.
It was a great, unexpected finding.
I spent about half an hour with these mushrooms, took plenty of photographs, and then ...
... walked directly to the car and drove back home. Once in my house, I sat in front of the computer to prepare this post.
Hope you enjoyed this winter walk with the focus on mushrooms. As always here on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.