Sunday, September 20, 2009

More Shelf Mushrooms

These crazy-looking bracket or shelf mushrooms showed up on an old Maple tree in our front yard. I have never seen anything like them before. They are a pumpkin orange, and kind of velvety feeling. I haven't been able to find them in any of my field guides. If anyone knows what they are I would sure like to know. Probably 1/4 of the tree is covered in these growths.

6 comments:

  1. I'll pull out my Mycology field guide and see if I can find them. They seem like they'd be distinctive enough!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Shelly,

    They sure look like they're fuzzy! Would you be able to post another photo from the top? We'd like to hazard a guess, but would love to get a top view first.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shelly I have googled, yahooed and even checked at Runge in Jeff and I can't find anything about those shrooms!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Julia---thank you, I hope you can find them. I have four mushroom guides and could not find them in any of them. I looked at them today and they are more tan in color, I guess it is time for them to fade.

    Kenton & Rebecca----Most of them are towards the top of the tree, so getting a picture of the topside of these would require acrobatics that I am too scared to perform. I will check tonight though and see if there are any that can be photographed topside towards the base of the tree. I would sure love to know what they are.

    Troy---Thank you so much for all the effort you put into trying to solve this mystery for me. I never thought about checking with MDC---DUH I volunteer there, surely someone at our local office would have an idea. I think I will forward this picture to my volunteer coordinator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting fungi, and pictures! I wonder also what it means about the maple tree? I've enjoyed your beautiful pictures below too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Beau--I thought it was interesting fungi too. The tree is very old, about 2 years ago half of the tree broke away and fell in the driveway. The remaining portion of the tree is facing away from any structures so I've let it stand. Eventually it will fall or have to be brought down. There have been other interesting fungi on the tree in the past, but nothing quite as unique as this. I would sure like to know what they are. I set the image over to our local MDC office and no one there knew quite what they were beyond shelf mushrooms. Thank you for the comments on my pictures.

    ReplyDelete