Picture is below. It's rather big, so you should be able to get all up and personal with this. Hello! I live in the Reston area of Northern Virginia. I took this photo on February 27th of 2018. I never stopped to actually find out what this actually is. It was unseasonably warm in the area around then, and there were a lot of plants thinking it looked to be springy enough for their tastes. A marine biologist that is smarter than I am suggested this is a lichen, and then pointed me to your forums. The closest I can find so far is this walk through a nature reserve called Soesterduinen in the Netherlands with a "yellow sponge lichen," but when I search for this, I am finding absolutely nothing revelatory in regards to this particular organism. If you might so graciously indulge me: what IS this? I really don't know. It's beautiful! Your help and knowledge would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Thank you Isetchell for the close-up view - it is very vivid, beautiful with the intricate folds. - The orange is a jelly fungus likely in genus Tremella or Dacrymyces, more likely the former. These fungi consume other fungi inside the wood, often Stereum. - The blue-green-whitish growths are lichen, at least three different species, perhaps more: If you have a shot a bit closer focused on those I might be able to ID. cheers! frog
Wow, thank you so much! We thought the jelly fungus was the lichen; I kept looking for pictures of lichen though and none of them were even remotely alike to the texture and structure of what I was looking at. This is amazing. Apparently these are edible, too. The lichen I wish I had a better shot of; I'll see if I can find any around! If I want to have more fungi identified, do I start a new thread? I've got a couple more that are really amazing-looking.
Yes, really best to start new threads for each of them, so you can more easily follow any discussion and not confuse which comments are about which, unless they have to be in the same photo. You can click the sort of head/torso icon at the upper right to find all your postings (content).
