Wow, Wow, Wow!!

July's abundant rainfall has left me eager to go mushroom hunting.  Mushrooms erupt like crazy when the forest is damp - and damp it has been.  Yesterday afternoon, we put the puppy in his crate with a treat-filled Kong toy to keep him occupied and we headed out into the woods in search of all things fungi.

Now, if you share my love of mushrooms, then you will understand why I was so excited about the specimens we found.  If you have not yet acquired a fascination for fungi... hang on, after this, you just might!

As we entered the woods, we were greeted by this giant... and what a perfect greeting for this foray through the woods!

It was absolutely - gigantic.  You can see the comparison to Jack's hand (and Jack has very large hands!)

We wandered through the woods, with eyes on the forest floor and boy, we were not disappointed.  One of the first mushrooms that I found were these golden chanterelles.  (An edible that I have searched for before, but never found.). And though I am almost certain of the identification, I am not confident enough in my ability to 100% correctly identify - so we did not pick them to eat, but rather left them in place... happy to just have seen them in our woods.

Close by, an old favorite found on tree stumps... orange jelly fungus.

So many of the colorful (mostly reds, corals and oranges) mushrooms were nibbled on by forest creatures, 

so I was very happy to find this intact red mushroom - still glistening from the morning's rainstorm.

Another new-to-me specimen was this "old man of the woods" mushroom.

Shortly thereafter, I found yet another one...

Also a member of the fungi family are slime molds.  This one, below was about the size of a half dollar... surrounded by moss and topped by a tiny slug.

I loved how delicate this tiny specimen was... it's circumference less than that of a dime.

As I knelt there taking a photo, I noticed what looked like rust on the tree next to me.  What I saw were tiny rust colored freckles, no bigger than one or two millimeters.  Under magnification, however, I could see that they were three dimensional, and looked perhaps like a fungus or maybe a lichen.

Next to them, about the size of a pencil eraser was this tiny clump of mushrooms.

Had I not been kneeling, inspecting the ground, I would have missed all of the action on that particular tree.  It's amazing to me how much of nature goes un-noticed because of its diminutive size!

On another tree, I saw these tiny, bright yellow orbs... also tiny mushrooms.

And the perfect mushroom to shelter a fairy from a downpour...

Another benefactor of the ample rain is moss.  This clump looked like tiny moss mountains to me.

At the base of every rotting stump were specimens of every size and many colors...

I found a few clumps of a massive mushroom that looked very much like Hen of the Woods.  However, it's the wrong time of summer for this particular edible mushroom... making this specimen that of the black-staining polypore.  This mushroom measured about a foot in diameter.

Thus named because it turns a blackish color when bruised.

Another new-to-me was this bolete - of which we saw several.

The most exciting find of this trip was something unanticipated.  Although it looks like a mushroom, it is actually a plant... the ghost pipe.  I have seen photos of them, but had never found one before this trip to the woods.

This plant produces no chlorophyl - thus it has no green color.  It depends upon a mushroom network for its survival and is apparently associated with beech trees - of which we have many.

Where there was one... there were more....

And more...

And more!

From what I have read, there are those who make a tincture from the flowers and stems for the relief of pain... not something I would entertain trying, however.

Every trip to the woods leaves me awe-inspired at the intricacies of this earth.  What a world we get to call home!