Fungi in the Yard

   It has been quite humid this summer at times.  The humidity must be conducive to the growth of a lot of mold, mushrooms and other fungi that I found around the yard.  As a matter of fact there was at least one local school that closed for mold remediation.  Some of them were so strange looking---one reminded me of a fried egg, another two round stones, a pancake, a donut, and a piece of an old tire.  Then I began to pretend that I was the first to lay my eyes on these oddities of nature and I got the right to give them a scientific name.   For the pancake one:  flapjackus jerseyanni or the fried egg one: circulus friedeggi.  See if you can think of names for some of the others. 

     One photo is not a fungus at all.  It belongs to the green plant family but it has no chlorophyll.  Green plants get their energy from the sun but the ghost plant or Indian pipes do not.  It is a white plant that is a host to a type of fungus as I understand it.  This relationship allows for the plant to not depend on sunlight to grow just like the other fungi.

    Another plant that has a strange way of functioning are the lichens. Lichens are made up of two tiny living things: a fungus and alga.  The fungus and the alga benefit from living together. The alga produces food, and the fungus gathers water. In this way a lichen can survive weather that would kill a fungus or an alga growing alone. This type of relationship is called symbiosis.

 

Here one that reminds me of a cauliflower:

Piece of old tire:

Two types of lichen:

Just strange:

Mold that killed off the lawn in shady places and was the worst ever:

Good photo of the mushroom gills.  I heard you can make "spore" prints from these:

Cute as a button:

Frilly Fungi:

Not a Fungus:

I gave this one a scientific name a dried up flapjackus jerseyanni:

Donuts:

An Indian Pipe:

Anyone for breakfast? 

 

Two stones:

Marshmallows:

Looks yummy but beware.  Don't try any of them--

although my grandfather knew which ones were good to eat!