Bracket fungi can be quite beautiful at times and depending on the species it can sometimes be decieving. For example in the first image one might would think this to be a close up of a section of some moth wing and if it were not for the absence of the beautiful irridecent scales of the moth, one might well assume it be a moth wing and be done with it. However it is only a Turky Tail, bracket fungi, that I found growing on a decaying log and decided to bring it home to add to my newly started collection of lichens and fungi. Another bracket fungi (second image) that I found and collected, I do not know the name of but it too is quite beautiful and reminds me of a late afternoon sky, just after the sun has set below the horizon.
Hello Daniel No its is a personal collection. Lichens and bracket fungi are quite common here where I live in North Carolina. To be quite honest, I have only become interested in them about a week or so ago. My main interests lie in the myxomycota, which I find extreamly fascinating because they begin their lives as an animal (an amoeba or myxamoeba) and go on to transition into a fungi or myxomycete, producing a diverse array of colorful fruiting bodies. Thank you for your reply Daniel. :o)
A photo I took of Trametes versicolor this summer: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=17249
I have seen where these bracket fungi have been colonized by algae before. Though these are not lichens, it would be most interesting to find out what type of algae lives on them or maybe in them. Lichens are most noted to form a symbiosis with the algae Trebouxia sp. and some say that it is not a symbiosis but a form of "controlled parasitism," (Simon Schwendener, a German who was the first to discover the dual nature of lichens). I must take a sample the next time I am out and bring it back for analysis. Thank you allelopath.
