There’s a Fungus Among Us

In my latest wilderness wanderings, I’ve encountered some fungal friends. Actually, I have no idea if they’re friendly or not. Probably not. Besides bracket fungi, I haven’t been able to identify many of the others because online sources are all concerned that you’re trying to figure out what they are so you can eat them and don’t want to get sued to Mars and back. Don’t worry; I’m not particularly interested in eating the mushrooms you can buy at the supermarket, so I’m very uninterested in eating random mushrooms I find on the forest floor. I do know they’re not the highly prized morels, or the highly poisonous Amanita ocreata (also known as the death angel, destroying angel, or angel of death, which besides often being fatally toxic, is similar in appearance to multiple edible mushrooms). Anything in between, including species that are merely “inedible” or “not recommended” to be ingested, is possible.

Don't know what this guy is, but it was a solid foot wide.

Just your average bracket fungus.

Another bracket fungus.

Some sort of honey fungus?  Don't quote me on that.  Likely at least mildly poisonous, not that I have any intention of letting it anywhere near my mouth.

No idea.  Might be a fungus.  Could be a lichen.  Or maybe paint.

Your biology lesson for the day: fungi are a kingdom of organisms that include yeasts and molds, as well as mushrooms. They’re eukaryotic, meaning they have a nucleus within a membrane; heterotrophic, so they can’t produce their own food; and have spores. Mushrooms don’t have roots, but rootlike mycelium, made up of hyphae, which are collections of cells that form long branching filament-like structures surrounded by a cell wall. In fungi, the cell wall is primarily chitin, as opposed to cellulose in plants. And lastly, there are approximately 14,000 species of mushrooms, tens to hundreds of thousands of types of molds, and around 1,500 yeasts, so there is indeed a lot of fungus among us.