Sunday, 15 February 2015

Beautiful unknowns

One thing you learn quickly when looking at everything you find is that sometimes you need to just appreciate the beauty of something without knowing what it is. I already have quite a catalogue of photographs of unknown species, which I will try to identify if time allows.

Two recent discoveries have fitted into this. The first was this Cladonia lichen, with red tips bringing a splash of colour to the Long Mynd.

Cladonia sp.

Cladonia sp.

Another find was this orange fungi, which I found whilst walking up the Rough Road. It is a brain fungi, one of the Tremlla species. From a photograph it is not possible to identify it, though as these fungi are parasitic on other fungi if you can see the species it is growing on that can be a useful pointer. Tremella mesenterica is parasitic on Peniophora fungi, whilst T. aurantia is parasitic on Hairy Curtain Crust. In this case I could not determine what this fungi was parasitising, though if I had to go one way I would go for the latter.

Tremella sp.

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