At first I thought this was going to be tiny mushrooms, but these are slime molds. You may be familiar with the dog vomit slime mold but other slime molds have a whole different look like this one.
A side view for scale. I could not see any gills or pores in the field and slime molds do not have either. So I brought it home to get a closer look.
Whatever the black thing was it had an outer shell. Back in the field I thought it was going to be poop. At the time I did not notice the little stem on one end. My microscope photos did not reveal much about the slime mold. Slime molds are not classified as fungi, but rather in the Kingdom Protista.
Next to the slime mold embedded in the soil were a small black cup fungus.
Fallen logs always are interesting. And decomposers are the ultimate recyclers!
And it is beautiful!
Another fallen log makes it easy to see the conks.
Wrinkly small mushrooms.
We were getting a light rain so I paused to watch the mushroom catch the rain drops.
Here I made an assumption that these were old Jack O’Lantern mushrooms. I had seen them here on this exact stump last year. Looking under them I found they had completely disintegrated.
Finally I saved the best fungi for last. It was either a Hericium coralloides or Hericium americanum, Coral Tooth Fungus. My research said that the length of the spines were key. However I did not know that at the time. Thus no measurements.
Closeup!
There were multiple specimens on the cut logs. So cool!
Great picture of the coral tooth fungus. I love it. Your pictures make anything pretty. Thank you
Thank you 🙂
Slime molds are really neat.
So many are so tiny. Easy to overlook.
Wowee, the coral tooth fungus is spectacular! It looks like a cave formation. You found a treasure trove!
Indeed we did!