a mushroom mystery solved

this is my contribution to #FungiFriday by @ewkaw

on my walks through the forest to get to Lillevik beach i usually choose the path that brings me to my favorite individual fungus, this peculiar specimen of red-belted conk, Fomitopsis pinicola. i have observed it's fascinating development for several years but sadly when i returned there last, the conk was nowhere to be found. it's funny how one can become attached to a thing like this. i won't go so far to say it has a personality but i think you'll agree this particular conk has unique qualities and it has had them since it first appeared four years ago. but it's disappearance is not the mystery here.

there are quite a few fallen trees lying in the swampy forest but apart from a few scattered red-belted konks, all of which have the more typical form and a stump full of artist's brackets i have never observed any other fungi on the rotting trees in that area. and i have searched thoroughly during different seasons and different weather conditions.

however what i did find on a couple of rotting logs was this and i have long wondered what it possibly could be. it's not bark nor roots of any plant. this growth, if that is what it is covered two logs but was not to be seen on any of the many others nearby

i thought they looked particularly interesting so i took a few shots, this one in black and white. slightly creepy but hey, this is the death and decomposition part of the cycle of life, and it has it's beauty in many forms. so anyway, somewhere in the back of my mind i had stored this curiosity for a few years but never made any serious attempt of discovering what it could be

then last October in a completely different forest i came upon these

they looked cool, i wasn't sure if they were honey mushrooms, Armillaria mellea, because the caps seemed too dark. i take a lot of fungi fotos, so many in fact that it takes a while to go through the ones i am uncertain or completely ignorant about. it's when i make a post like this that i do some research. as it turns out honey mushroom is an aggregate of many different species and though i can't say exactly which, there is significant variety among them and at least in one species the caps are darker than the typical honey colored ones i am more familiar with.

i consulted mushroomexpert.com about honey mushrooms and well into the article a photo appeared that looked very much like what i had seen and wondered about above.

"Ecology: Pathogenic and

on the wood of hardwoods (and occasionally on conifers); causing a white, pulpy rot in the wood; spreading through wood, and from tree to tree, by means of long black conspicuous ; typically appearing in large clusters on wood"

long, black and conspicuous were familiar terms but i had to look up rhizomorphs. turns out they are mats of mature mycelial cords that look like plant roots and have similar functions of transporting nutrients. they can be up to 9 meters long and mainly found in honey mushrooms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelial_cord

i hope you learned something new today because i certainly did and thereby finally solved the mystery while writing this post