Forest Fungi Walk

On a chilly Friday afternoon my Bio class and I spent our time going on a walk in a forested area near our school to hunt for some fungi that we had been studying about, for the past week. Such types of fungi include Oomycota (water molds), Zargomacota (common molds), Ascomycots (sac fungi), Bacidiomycota (club fungi), and Deuteromycota (imperfect fungi). You would think you would find mushrooms all over the place, but in mine and Shaineel's case we had to travel deeper into the wooded areas to seek what we were looking for. On our travels we ventured upon many shelf mushrooms, some of which had bright colours like neon orange, and others with just a boring brown tone. After accepting the fact we couldn't go much further, had it been raining earlier and the days before, we decided to turn back, missing out on the fact that we might have been able to find some awesome Oomycota water mold fungi towards the creek. Though since it were too slippery nobody felt the urge to go for a little swim. Deciding it would be a bit more suitable to our footwear, we hiked over fallen branches and leaves to come across little amounts of neon orange jelly fungi hiding on top of a tree trunk with a carved face in it. Had you not stepped on top of a tree branch or trunk you would never have found it hiding, just sitting there soaking in the rain water and sunlight that would remain still on the head of the tree. As my partner and I made our way out and back to the teacher I came across a couple little patches of club mushrooms as well as some forming shelf mushrooms. If you hadn't been looking closely enough and inspecting all the area around you, missing these magnificent forms would have been too easy. Too think if we actually spent some time looking around while out for a stroll, we'd be amazed at the things we could find.

 A nice bright orange shelf mushroom

 Two stacked shelf mushrooms

 Club mushroom

 Forming shelf mushrooms

 Neon orange jelly fungi

 More shelf mushrooms

Even more shelf mushrooms

Crustose lichen