Orange corals beneath spruce trees, and sacrifice to vampire spirits of the forest .:. EN/RU

I left the city for three days and went to our summer place to check on my wife and daughter, and also to inspect our local forest for mushrooms. Of course, I took my faithful and only (except for music) friend - a 150mm Sigma macro lens... Of course, I found mushrooms, and took a lot of photos (and even brought something for the frying pan - enough to add flavor to the soup), but I will show all this another time, in a separate post. The thing is that despite the incessant rains and warm weather over the past month - the forest turned out to be completely empty! I wandered for three hours, checking out its different parts, and at the same time enjoying a good harvest of blueberries.

Eventually the sun began to fade, and I turned homewards. Now the most interesting, magical part of the story, but firstly a small digression. There exist 'coral mushrooms' - which have especially unusual, cute and impressive outlook in photographs. But usually I come across more trivia shrooms. It was until the last year that I had a happy encounter with large colony of similar fungus; it settled on a huge rotten trunk, and I managed to get plenty of pics (already published this photo below at Hive):

So, I walked through an empty forest, brushing off mosquitoes, and already turned towards home; at some point I remembered my encounter with said coral mushroom which took place apparently in this part of forest. It was rather not a pleasurable nostalgia, but a regretting in a form of: "How good it would be to encounter such a fungus again, cause is not May anymore, when forest have a right to stand empty and the mycelium is just starting to wake up from winter hibernation - it is already July, the middle of summer, and this damn mycelium could already wake up, it's already time!"

And... then the magic happened! Materialization of thoughts! I swear to you I am not making this story up, everything happened exactly like this: about a minute after this thought flashed in my head, I stopped, because ... Excitement!!! A hunting stance! I could not believe my eyes - it was it! first I saw a small tongue of orange flame, like from a Zippo lighter; and another one next to it; and then, looking around the area carefully, I noticed a dozen more - I came across a place where a whole colony of this fungus have emerged from the soil. It turned out to be precisely a coral fungus I wanted, more to say - a different variety, not the one I encountered two years ago. Happiness!!! Neon orange-coloured fungi arent quite usual in our area, so I enjoyed every bit of the sight Heaven sent me.

Well, there's something else that was left behind the scenes: mosquitoes. Lighting is definitely a key moment for a good photo, but with a tripod and a long shutter speed you can always get something; by changing the focus you can take a series of photos and glue them together into a sharper and more detailed synthetic image. But when you are attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes, and you forgot to put on a rubber diving suit - the option to take a series of photos for a macro-steak is unavailable.

It is because of mosquitoes that I called my post "sacrifice to vampire spirits of the forest" - the spruce part of the forest turned out to be the most mosquito-licious. Of course, they followed me during the walk, but a couple of torn branches were enough for me to drive them away - my right hand was squeezing the camera, and my left hand worked in the role of a cow's tail. And of course, I tried not to linger too long in any one place. But here I was forced to stop for a long time - and the number of hungry mosquitoes in this part of the forest turned out to be several times greater.

Check out the density! My hand would freeze for 3 seconds - and 15 to 20 mosquitoes would instantly land on it. A record in my memory... And if you're thinking of giving me advice right now - "Dude, use mosquito repellent!" - believe me, I went into the forest with a can of repellent in my pocket and smeared my hands, face and ears with this product. And you know what? The mosquitoes did not give a flying fuck on this chemical!

It was at this moment that the thoughts in my head took the form that later turned into the title of my post. Sitting on my knees on the ground and creating beautiful images, I gave my body to vampires for a dozen minutes, stopped waving (well, almost) and qualified it as a sacrifice to the spirits of the forest ... mosquitoes as the embodiment of this spirit; an exchange of blood for beautiful photographs. However, I gave a little blood and still hurried to change the location - probably that's why there were few good photos :)

But these are not the only photos of these mushrooms that I took that day. The story continues. Knowing in advance that a photo shoot in poor lighting will bring dubious results, and I am not able to move the sun to the location... I decided to move the mushrooms. The decision is not indisputable, even dubious, but why not?

And most importantly: I would like to see these mushrooms further. I found a thick branch on the ground and tried to dig up the mushroom along with the soil, as deep as possible to capture the mycelium. Mushrooms, of course, are not transplanted this way, the mycelium does not travel easily... or does it? I conducted an experiment, and we will find out the result next summer. Recently, I was explaining to my daughter what science is and the meaning of the scientific approach, how the concepts of hypothesis / theory / experiment are related. Long live the scientific approach!

Now you probably understand why I lingered in the mosquito spot and did not leave quickly... The digging process immediately brought the first interesting result! I saw the mycelium... in a sense. These mushrooms were sticking out of the ground in several places - seemingly random points... but having studied the matter more deeply, you understand that this is in fact one mushroom - one mycelium, which has taken up residence in a thick pine branch shallowly hidden under a layer of dead leaves. I dug it out with some difficulty, and all these fruiting bodies, which seemed to an outside observer to be whimsically scattered here and there - turned out to be one family, like fingers on a hand.

I easily moved the dug out branch to another much better lit place, and photographed it, and then put it in a bag, which happily waited for its finest hour in the back pocket of my trousers, and carried it to our summer house. Our land has similar soil - we have six large firs, birches, three oaks and several pines. I buried the branch again under the firs and generously watered it. At some point in time, the place turned out to be well illuminated by the sun - and I arranged photo session number two for this mushroom, this time in good photo-friendly conditions (these photos are below). But this is not the end of the story.

Next morning I was not going to visit the forest - I already found out it was empty and I would not find mushrooms either for frying pan or for the camera.

...but of course I wasn't sitting at home, and as usual I was checking the surroundings with a camera in my hands. And since the orange color is so visible... both among the greenery and against the background of brown dead foliage... well, you already understood, right? These mushrooms came to me almost on my doorstep! At a distance of up to 100 meters, to be more precise. What do you see in this photo below?

It is difficult to photograph such a large object in its entirety with a macro lens; but I tried. Yes, you guessed it right: it is a bed! More precisely, a sofa that someone threw out of their house onto the road many years ago. I understand, the sofa was very heavy item, difficult to transport to the waste area. 🤓 Therefore, it was nature who took over the disposal of said sofa. There are no slightest traces of fabric, upholstery or stuffing, but the steel springs of course still resist the rusting process (it is thanks to the springs I could guess it was a sofa!). There remained several fragments of wooden parts - and it was where another family of this fungus settled, happily feasting on rotting wood. To my complete delight the spot was full of sun! I could put myself down the slope, taking ideal position for shooting.

Ok, now the last but not the least: a few words on identification. There are several different species of Orange Coral, or Stagshorn that you hardly distinguish from each other. They have similar shapes, and the color within one species can vary from bright, golden-yellow or yellow-orange, to pale yellow - depending on a place of growth and age of a colony. In this case, I chose between three relatives: Calocera viscosa / Ramariopsis crocea / Clavulinopsis laeticolor - and consider it to be Calocera viscosa (but thats not for sure).