This year's fungi season didn't start very well here in my area. The weather is still pretty dry generally. The rains are short. There is a bit of humidity each morning, but it vanishes quickly. The result - life is quite pleasant, but there aren't many mushrooms around.
After a bit of exploring across a pretty large area from my seaside hometown to the central part of the Istra peninsula, I found out that the best place to get some Fungi Friday material from is actually very close, at a walking distance from my house ...
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... in the quiet shallow bay ...
... near the port of Medulin, the town in which I live.
Although the variety of species isn't that great, there is always something new to discover or something old to reinterpret.
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This time the new was a group of minuscule white mushrooms that grew on the humid, decaying straw of grass or some other small, herbaceous plant on the meadow. I don't remember noticing this species before. Near the fully developed fruiting bodies on this and the previous photograph, you may notice some much smaller white spheres.
These mushrooms at their beginning are extremely small.
If the developed mushrooms are small, challenging stuff for macro, this is bordering with micro.
I'm not sure about the species. Maybe Cudoniella acicularis. Just maybe.
While photographing the mushrooms, I noticed an insect nearby.
This is a bug from the Miridae family. Don't know the exact species. I found quite a few similar-looking Miridae on the internet, but not one of those looked exactly like this.
A bit further, the Lycoperdon echinatum was coming out of the soil.
The rugged surface of this puffball mushroom's crust looks pretty cool in macro view.
Some plants around the mushrooms were in bloom, so I photographed a couple of flowers along with the fungi.
This is the small flower of the Clinopodium vulgare.
Here you can see the composite Scabiosa triandra flower.
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This colorful Russula sanguinaria looked a bit like a flower. From a distance, at least.
Some time later, about a hundred meters from there, I found two Russula rosea mushrooms.
These are also some very decorative fungi, with nice shades of red, magenta, and pink.
One of them had an unusual protuberance at the center of the cap. After taking this shot ...
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... I passed by some pretty big unrecognizable, decaying mushroom ...
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... continued across the meadow covered with dandelions and daisies ...
... and arrived at the grove of big old pines.
I noticed another mushroom there. The stalk was hidden by the grass and layer of needles that fell from the tree. When I removed a bit of the foliage I noticed a half-buried pine cone near the mushroom. When I unearthed the cone ...
... things looked considerably different. This is the Mycena Seynesii, a mushroom that grows mainly on decaying pine cones.
There was another cone nearby. A spider was resting on that one.
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This is the Pisaura mirabilis spider.
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On my walk under the pines, I saw more mushrooms but didn't stop to photograph the details because I was a bit in a hurry.
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As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work - THE END.
