Week Seven

3:30 PM Thursday, May 29
Cloudy 60 degrees
Magnuson Park

My site continues to become more and more overgrown! This made searching for fungi this week even more difficult. Before I discuss the fungi I was able to find, I will provide a brief update of what I noticed at my site. First, I noticed the twin berries at my site are starting to get berries. Also bees keep getting more and more active- I noticed much more today than I have the past times I have been at my site. Also, sadly, the mallard family is now only 3 ducklings (at least that was all I saw today). I'm hoping I'll end up seeing the other ducklings again, but I don't think the mallard mom would intentionally leave her ducklings behind.

The three mallard babies. They were sitting right by me!

Twin berry getting its berries.

I was able to find many lichens at my site. I think I found a few mushrooms that were similar to some of the conks that we saw in class, but I also feel like they might be lichens. I'm not entirely sure. All of the species that I found were either on logs or on red alder trees (that is where I found the lichens).

There are two types of lichen shown in this picture, both crustose.  The white lichen is seen on many red alders throughout the region. The smaller yellow-orange colored lichen is also common on many trees. This was on the trunk of a red alder. 

This lichen was also on a red alder tree- this was on many of its branches. It is thin and papery with a sort of light green tint that is very hard to see in this picture. It is a foliose lichen.

This lichen is also very common on the red alder branches. It is a fruticose lichen and its long and white, green and yellow. Sort of hairy in appearance. 

This is a terrible photograph, but here are some more bright green crustose lichen I found on the side of a log. 

I am not entirely sure it this is a fungi or a lichen. It did not seem to have gills, but maybe pores. The bottom is green with red spots and the tops were more whitish. I found this growing on a log. I feel like it could possibly be a foliose lichen, but I think it is probably a fungi. 

This seems like some sort of conk fungi. It was whitish on the bottom and the tops are dark brown-black with some green. Again it seemed to have pores rather than gills, and it was growing on the side of a log. My guess is that it is a wood decomposer, but I have not been able to pinpoint its exact species. 

Another very similar sort of fungi. It is attached to the log much the same was the other ones were. The tops of this one are bumpy and light brown-gray in color. The edges were sort of rough, and it did not seem to have gills either.