A few minutes observing…a tree stump

During one of the training sessions for the Howard County Conservancy’s fall field trips, we stopped briefly near the chicken coop to talk about topics for the kindergarten and 1st grade hikes. There is a stump in the area that used to be mostly surrounded by other plants…hard to get close enough to look at closely. Now it is clear all around it and it’s possible to approach in from all sides.  It’s been decomposing long enough to have several examples of fungus that were enjoying the recent wet weather to grow rapidly. As I listened to the conversation around me – I spent a few minutes photographing parts of the stump.

A flat fungus with tiny water droplets – with the clip-on macro lens.

A jelly fungus that seemed to glow (also with the clip-on macro).

And a picture with and without the macro lens that was a fungus that reminded me of mineral deposits in caves!

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Sometimes pictures I take very quickly when I am rushed are ones I only take time to enjoy later…once I am home and have time to really look.

Jelly Fungus

Our deck is over 20 years and has tiny stands of jelly fungus fruiting bodies in the knots of its railing after a heavy rain. I photographed on knot in late July just after they appeared

And then a day later. They expanded very rapidly.

The jelly dried up but after a heavy rain last Thursday they were back and even bigger.  They have a blobby beauty.

This means that the deck railings are rotting...and will have to be replaced at some point. Fortunately, the other parts of the deck have no yellow blobs!