Fungi Friday - A REFRESHING MUSHROOM INVASION IN MY GARDEN

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It was raining a few days ago ... not much, but the humidity got hold in some shady corners off my yard & garden ...

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... so a nice bunch of little parasol creatures appeared along the garden wall ...

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... under the olive tree. I tried to take at least one wider shot with the tree and the mushroom in the same frame, but it didn't work, it's a small tree but is still a giant when compared to the mushrooms, so the mushrooms were too small to be visible on that kind of photograph. Fortunately, the fallen fruits were scattered all around, especially on the picture above this explanation ... which looks a bit like a needles piece of text, I mean, who cares under what tree these little umbrellas are growing :D. Yes, it could be some important biological reason behind this fact, but I didn't put all this words together because of that ...

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... nope :) I wrote this because I don't know what to talk about in this post, and I obsessively need to have some text in between two pictures.

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And plenty of pictures I have. :D Indeed.

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I mean, only about 20, not much really ... for a more complex post with many interesting creatures and stuff in it ... but for this ...

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... the same mushrooms from slightly different angles ...

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... photographed using the available light in slightly different ways ...

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... zooming in ...

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... then zooming out ...

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... creating just slightly different compositions ...

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... using the same set of shapes and colors ...

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... mostly browns ...

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... yep ... highly repetitive stuff ... culminating with an enlargeable shot ... but ...

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... but who knows ... maybe there is an audience for this here ... maybe someone would find this kind of presentation appealing ... or somehow calming at least, maybe scrolling through a pile of same - looking pictures can cure insomnia with its catatonia - inducing properties.

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And now :D for those who endured this long muddled introduction ... the prize ... the deliverance ... the real thing !

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A bit of vivid green ! These are my zucchini.

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They are growing not far from there ...

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... and they have some really gorgeous flowers ...

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... which are also edible.

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And now ... after the short green interlude ... let's go back to the mushrooms. These are the very common Coprinellus micaceus mushrooms. They typically grow in clusters on or near the rotting wood, near tree stumps or roots not too deep in the ground ... and they are edible, but only in the short period before they turn into black goo, some kind of dense black ink, which happens pretty soon after they appear.
Coprinellus micaeus was first illustrated in a woodcut by the 16th-century botanist Carolus Clusius in what is arguably the first published monograph on fungi, the 1601 Rariorum plantarum historia (History of rare plants).
Clusius erroneously believed the species to be poisonous, and classified it as a genus of Fungi perniciales (harmful fungi)
Just like the old, good Clusius, I was erroneously convinced that they are harmful ... mostly because they are small and numerous, and these small fungi always look dangerous at firs sight to me.
In the lower left part of the picture above, If you take a good look, you'll see a small piece of dirt or rotten wood stuck between the umbrellas.

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Here is a more up close view. This shot was taken with the macro lens adapter on. Small mushrooms are sprouting from that little island. I find this little detail pretty cool :) that's all.

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I found the mushrooms yesterday morning. Very early in the morning. And interestingly I was working in that angle of the garden till the late evening, practically till the dark, the day before. So they literally sprouted overnight.
To illustrate how short-lived they usually are, suffice to say that this ... and the following photographs ...

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... were taken on that day, some hours later, in the late afternoon ... and this toad that was passing by in search of some nice, humid shelter ...

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... arrived in the right moment :) to add a bit of biodiversity to this Fungi Friday entry.

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As always in these posts on HIVE, all the photographs are my work - THE END.



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13 comments
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Wow! Never seen so many kinds of mushrooms together in one garden! I hope some of them were edible!
That frog won’t like mushrooms as they could not fly!

Would love to grow some zucchini in my garden! Couldn’t find any seeds here!

I hope the rain would stop and the sky is blue soon!

Cheers.

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These kind are edible but not if you drink alcohol too soon after eating them. Otherwise it causes a bad stomach ache.

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Toad is guarding them from flies.

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He is responsible for that sector of my yard :D my amphibian gardener.

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He must eat all the bugs off the precious mushrooms. Borjan needs these for photos :-)

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I know fungi are important and multitudinous, but they just don't appeal to me. They remind me of alien life sprouting unbidden on earthly soil. However, the Zuchini, and the toad are magnificent...especially the toad :)

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He, he ... that slightly alien ambiance they create is exactly what appeals to me. It's a nice, natural way to send me on the SF trip. But yes, it's a relatively distanced way of liking something. :) Not like liking the cute, relatable stuff of this planet.

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