I had to leave my car in the repair shop just outside my hometown on the 3rd of October 2022. I also had to wait a couple of hours for things to be done there, so I went exploring the nearby pine grove in search of whatever nature has to offer in that area.
In this contribution to #FungiFriday by @ewkaw, I'll show you what I found on that occasion. The emphasis is on mushrooms, of course.
Fortunately, I had the macro lens with me ...
... so I was able to get some fairly good portraits of these small gracile mushrooms that grow on the layer of rotting needles fallen from the trees.
The name of the species is Marasmius calhouniae.
Near the ghostly white mushrooms, I found a ghostly white shell with no snail inside. This is a shell of the Pomatias elegans, a land snail from the Pomatiidae family.
If you enlarge this photograph by clicking on it, it will be easier to see the small Marasmius calhouniae that shares the pine cone with the much bigger Mycena Seynesii mushroom.
Marasmius calhouniae grows mainly on needles, but fruiting bodies can also be seen on rotting twigs and cones sometimes.
Here you can see the same two mushrooms in a slightly different shot taken by using only ambient light.
In early autumn, you can always find plenty of Mycena Seynesii mushrooms in a grove like this.
They can be seen on pine cones in various stages of decay. These two slightly withered mushrooms grew on a cone that is still in relatively good shape.
Here you can see a mushroom on the partially dissolved come still attached to the rotting piece of branch that fell from the pine.
By breaking down lignin and cellulose through the metabolic process, the fungus accelerates the decomposition of the cones.
At first sight, it looks like these two fruiting bodies have come out from the soil. But that's an illusion. They are attached to an old cone buried under a layer of needles.
In this wide shot, you can take a look at the trees and the general atmosphere in the grove. It was a warm, sunny day that came after the slightly colder rainy night.
In some shady places, the plants were still sparsely decorated with droplets.
This Pieris rapae butterfly was caught basking in the sun.
At one point, on the edge of the grove, near the unpaved road that leads to a couple of houses and the car repair shop, I came across a mushroom with a very interesting cap.
Half of the cap was uniformly brown and fairly smooth ...
... while the other half looked like something from a different mushroom. From a small Macrolepiota procera, for example.
Here you can take a better look at that pattern. The photograph was taken through the macro lens.
The mushroom grew on the horse dung. Panaeolus papilionaceus is the name of the species.
After photographing the mushroom, I used the macro lens to explore the small young plants scattered across the dung.
That dung by the side of the road ended up being a surprisingly interesting pile of horseshit, and a great addition to this post.
The mushrooms shown in this enlargeable photograph, have grown among the branches that someone cut down while cleaning a terrain on the edge of the area covered with pines.
The mushrooms have grown among and under piled branches and that pile was overgrown with tall grass. They were well hidden in a dark and humid place.
I saw quite a few mushrooms there. More than ten surely. But I photographed only this small group that I had to uncover to get this shot. I had to move some branches and the grass, destroying the ideal habitat for the mushrooms in the process. When it comes to the name of the species, I can't tell you that. But I'm pretty sure that these are some mushrooms from the genus Hydropus of the Marasmiaceae family.
This plant, the Oxalis articulata, was also photographed on the open terrain just outside the grove.
I found this lovely droplet on one of its leaves.
Some minutes later, in the grove again ...
... after taking a portrait of yet another Mycena Seynesii ...
... I came across Gymnopus dryophilus mushrooms. You can see a group of them here.
This Gymnopus dryophilus trio was photographed in the same area. Under another pine. As the branches of the tree were swaying in the wind, the mushrooms were going in and out of the shade.
In this wide shot, you can take a look at the surroundings, at the small clearing covered with a thick layer of needles fallen from the surrounding pines.
Here I zoomed in on the smallest fruiting body in the group.
These small flowers ...
... of the Spiranthes spiralis plant, were photographed about fifty meters further, more or less in the middle of the grove.
Spiranthes spiralis is an orchid, but since its flowers are very small ...
... it doesn't look like any other orchid from this area when seen from a distance. Only through the macro lens are the flowers clearly recognizable as tiny orchids.
This Entoloma sericeum was found and photographed nearby.
Here you can take a good look at the gills under the cap.
A meter or two from there, I photographed another Marasmius calhouniae. Just like the Mycena Seynesii, they were very numerous under the pines.
On the way back to the chair repair shop, I stopped in the open terrain just outside the pine grove to photograph two more mushrooms. I mean, two more species, more precisely.
This fragile mushroom was hidden in the tall grass.
Here I put the camera down on the ground to get a shot in which the gills are visible. Can't tell you the name of the species or anything else about this mushroom.
This is the Psathyrella candolleana.
The last species I photographed on that occasion.
The following links will take you to the sites with more information about some of the protagonists of this post. I found some stuff about them there.
https://www.messiah.edu/Oakes/fungi_on_wood/gilled%20fungi/species%20pages/Psathyrella%20candolleana.htm
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/118241-Marasmius-calhouniae/browse_photos
https://www.first-nature.com/fungi/entoloma-sericeum.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiranthes_spiralis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panaeolus_papilionaceus
https://mycena.no/seynesii.htm
HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS LITTLE JOURNEY UNDER AND AROUND THE PINES. AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.