Tag: mushrooms

Life on a Dead Tree

The cherry tree shortly after it fell

There is a particular fallen tree in the woods that I visit frequently, because there is usually something interesting to see there. When it was still standing, I identified it as a wild cherry, and although I’ve seen others, this one was the largest.

wild black cherry tree (Prunus serotina)
The wild cherry tree when it was still standing

A while after the tree fell, I started to notice a lot of different mushrooms growing on it, and I started to make a habit of checking on it to see if there were any particularly photogenic mushrooms there while I was out taking pictures in the woods.

mushroom
Super tiny mushroom with larger mushrooms in the background. This has become one of my favorite mushroom pictures.
Turkey-tails, possibly.
More mushrooms on the fallen tree

This spring while out in the woods taking pictures of the various wildflowers and trying to determine what kind of pollinators they were providing for, I noticed new interesting things happening with the downed cherry. At first I noticed the metallic green bees darting around the dark, scaly bark. Then I saw something green and shiny, but it wasn’t a bee…

A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)
A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)
A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)
The only view the tiger beetles seemed willing to give me… After passing up the opportunity to take a picture like this several times in favor of a ‘better’ angle I eventually took one up on the offer they were repeatedly giving me. Then I decided I actually like this picture quite a bit…
A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)
…But I still think the side shots give a better view of the beetle as a whole.

Even though tiger beetles have a bit of a reputation for being hard to photograph, I found the little green sweat bees to be much more difficult, at least in the circumstances the fallen tree offered. They were attracted to the dead tree as a nesting site and I would see them darting around the wood, but almost anytime they landed, they would immediately disappear into the tiny holes in the wood that were the entrances to their nests.

sweat bee
This is the best picture I managed to get of one of the sweat bees

I’m sure there are more creatures than just the ones I noticed making use of the dead tree as habitat, and I’ll continue to notice more as I keep on visiting the tree.

A toad that was sheltering under the bark of the tree
A seedling growing from a crack in the bark. I don’t know if this is a good place for this seedling to be growing, but I thought it was interesting.
Springtails on a mushroom
Another mushroom
A six-spotted tiger beetle (cicindela sexguttata)
Tiger beetle posing on a dried mushroom

Mushroom Gallery

Mushrooms are not my most familiar subject, especially as far as specific types go. Most of the ones I can specifically recognize are the distinctive looking ones (exactly the ones you’d expect). Mushrooms are undoubtedly worth knowing about, but so far I have mostly just been observing (and photographing) them. And I’ve been spotting some interesting ones lately.

mushroom
A super tiny mushroom among some lichens and larger shelf type mushrooms on a fallen cherry tree. This tree alone has offered a wide variety of mushrooms a place to grow, and has been one of my top places to look for mushrooms.
bird's nest mushroom
This is some sort of bird’s nest mushroom, but these ‘nests’ are not open yet…
bird's nest mushroom
Bird’s nest mushrooms again, but this time they are open, and showing off the ‘eggs’ inside, but I think this kind looks more like little cups of stones than the ones in the mushroom book I was using to identify them. There are different kinds, though, and in some the ‘eggs’ (which are actually packets of spores) are white like eggs (not that all eggs are white, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen grey eggs).
bird's nest mushrooms
Some more bird’s nest mushrooms, and these ones are very ripe (and smushed together pretty tightly).
mushrooms
These mushrooms were growing from a chunk of earth torn out of the ground by a fallen tree in the woods. This is the spot where they were thickest, which was in deep shadow, and it was dusk, so this picture is pretty dim, but it captures the scene quite accurately.
mushrooms
Some more mushrooms growing on the chunk of earth around the roots of a fallen tree; these were on the eastern side, catching the light of the setting sun.
mushrooms
More of the mushrooms on the eastern side, after the light had faded again.
mushroom
Mushrooms growing on a fallen log in the woods.
mushroom
I have no idea what this mushroom is. It was found in the leaf litter in the woods.
mushrooms
These were so tiny they just looked like tiny whitish bumps on a mossy log when I spotted them. The way they were clustered intrigued me, so I took some pictures.
mushrooms
More super tiny mushrooms. They were challenging to get a picture of, but the result was a better view of them than I could get with my own unaided vision, since they were too tiny to make out in any detail.
mushrooms
Yet another mushroom I don’t know what it is. It reminds me of turkey-tail, but I think turkey-tail is more colorful. Turkey-tail is one I would like to learn to identify, as I’m almost certain I’ve seen it on the fallen cherry tree (as well as other places) so it seems to be a common mushroom in this area.
turkey-tail mushrooms?
These are the mushrooms I think might actually be turkey-tails. These were on the fallen cherry tree last February, and the only ones I’m including in this series that weren’t spotted in the last couple months.
mushrooms
These mushrooms also kind of look like turkey-tail, and they’re more colorful than the ones they were growing right next to…