I almost always identify birds, animals and flowering plants that I photograph for this blog. Mosses and lichens and fungi however, are usually not identified. However, I will here share a bit of information about fungi that I have just learned from Wikipedia. Fungi are a "kingdom" meaning they are distinct from the other "kingdoms", animals and plants. One of the characteristics that differentiates them from plants is that their cell walls are made of chitin rather than cellulose. The kingdom contains about 1.5 million species of which only about 5% have been categorized. This makes me feel better about not being able to identify the various fungi I photograph. The fungus above was photographed recently in Goldstream Park near Victoria.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
About Fungi
I almost always identify birds, animals and flowering plants that I photograph for this blog. Mosses and lichens and fungi however, are usually not identified. However, I will here share a bit of information about fungi that I have just learned from Wikipedia. Fungi are a "kingdom" meaning they are distinct from the other "kingdoms", animals and plants. One of the characteristics that differentiates them from plants is that their cell walls are made of chitin rather than cellulose. The kingdom contains about 1.5 million species of which only about 5% have been categorized. This makes me feel better about not being able to identify the various fungi I photograph. The fungus above was photographed recently in Goldstream Park near Victoria.
5 comments:
Greetings!
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And living in this part of the world, we definitely see a lot of fungi!
ReplyDeleteWhat an impressive photo from an impressive fungi! Great!
ReplyDeletePia
I first read about this one a few years ago. Somehow I think there's a great sci-fi / horror movie concept here, if I were only more creative.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.infoplease.com/spot/fungus1.html
Great shot.
ReplyDeleteIt is some kind of polypore from the family Polyporaceae. Knowing what type of wood it was growing on would help identify it.
Mighty Mouse
Thanks for your comments JoJo and Pia.
ReplyDeleteMike, that's a fascinating article on that giant fungus.
Anon- thanks for the information. I have no idea what kind of wood it was growing on. I'm almost as bad at identifying trees as I am at identifying fungi.