While Xanthoria polycarpa looks like miniature egg tarts, this one looks like miniature donuts. They are on a piece of rotting bark on the ground. In one of the foto is an 8 legged creature, possibly a tick ? Kindly ID please, if possible, the 8 legged.
Donuts! I looove donuts! :-) These are very likely Bisporella citrina, lovely distinctive colour. They are ascomycetes, the same broad group containing the carbon antlers posted a few days ago.
Thanks a lot. No wonder, I just embarked upon the wrong tree, thinking and searching for lichens instead of fungi. So, that guy is a mite. Well, I need to keep a distance from mite, as well as ticks : potential deadly pathogen doners.
I'm not sure why I even went to look at that Mycoblitz page, except for getting interested in all these mushrooms being posted recently (thanks, @David Tang), but I enjoyed reading it, and looked for more photos. When I clicked on Photos on the left, selected one album, I was so surprised to recognize the first photo I looked at as a donut. I learned that there are different species of Bisporella. The Wikipedia Bisporella citrina - Wikipedia page notes the difference between B. citrina and B. sulfurina, which is what was posted on the Mycoblitz photos page. They seem pretty hard to distinguish, though there is one photo of B. citrina in google search results that looks just like what is pictured here.
Very kismet-ish encounter Wendy! Maybe you will run into this next time you are out :-) I have not attempted to distinguish these two species, but I understand that B. sulfurina is smaller (though the lowest/highest values are within range of each other), the typical habitat differs a bit, and the spores are smaller/narrower.
The first thing I noticed were the donuts and "Life Savers" look, before I noticed there were more in disc form. I was guessing will these discs turn into donuts as they grow bigger ? I just had a closer look in the original un-downsized fotos : I found the holes in the donuts are not really holes, but a dimple in the disc, accentuated by the dark environ.
