Fascinated by Fungi

On my morning walks lately, I’ve found myself fascinated by fungi.

While this is possibly a sign that I need to get a life (all work and no play makes Janet a dull girl, which says a lot about my days of late), I have been amazed by the variety of unusual specimens that have literally popped up like mushrooms overnight (haha).

I mean, take a look at this one.

At first glance I thought it was a bit of fishing net, as we do live near the bay.

But then I noticed several others nearby. So my next guess was they were flowers from a nearby tree – until I realised they were actually growing out of the ground, as can be clearly seen in the next pic.

Or how about this one which looks like coral?

This one looks like some weird sort of jellyfish!

While this is more what you’d expect from a mushroom.

Which got me thinking – what is the difference between mushrooms and toadstools? It’s not very scientific, but ones that are edible tend to fall into the category of “mushroom”, while the poisonous ones are “toadstools”. As I wouldn’t have a clue about either, I was very careful not to actually touch, let alone eat, any of them!

We sometimes get the white “puffballs” in our front yard – great fun to tread on as they explode with a satisfying puff of dust.

And of course there was the fairy ring which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.

I saw a lot more but didn’t even think to take pictures of them at first, and most disappeared within a couple of days, so I missed my chance this time around.

But you never know I might delve further into nerd territory next time we have a lot of rain and fabulous fungi!

And in the meantime I promise to make it my mission to develop a healthier work-life balance so I can bring you more interesting blog posts 😉 .

What’s the most unusual mushroom you’ve ever noticed? And do you take photos of them too?!