Fungi Friday: Mushrooms on the way to the mountain

27 days ago

Greetings to the Fungifriday community in this my first participation in this contest.

Fungi are a very large and interesting group, so different from other organisms that they have to be in a separate kingdom: Fungi. I like to photograph them and have an approximation of what species they belong to because I'm not a fungi specialist.

This is my contribution to #FungiFriday by @ewkawen, and the photographs of these fungi that I show you were taken in a mountainous area belonging to the Henry Pittier National Park in Maracay. Venezuela. This area is humid. In the mountain there is a cloud forest.

That day I was with my daughter, we had climbed a stretch of the mountain, in what is known as the Cerro del Hotel Maracay. On the way back, very tired but always observing nature, I saw them on the trees. This mushroom with its beautiful color and shape caught my attention. And I took these pictures of it.

This fungus is known as scarlet copica and its genus is Sarcoscypha where there are several species, it belongs to the family Sarcoscyphaceae.

As seen in the photographs it was at the base of a trunk. The bibliography that I consulted says that it is a saprophytic fungus. It feeds on decomposing woody material.

The color of the back of its body is cream.

Near this fungus I was able to photograph this other cream-colored fungus growing on a tree trunk. In this case the tree was quite tall and very leafy. Its body resembles a fan. It is also a saprophytic fungus of the genus Crepidotus.