100 More Species: #6 Gray-lilac crust

[urbpan]

Gray-lilac crust Peniophora lycii

I like to remind people that rot, the apparently passive process of biological entropy, is actually the vigorous activity of a community of living things. Wood is made up of several components which are resistant to the agents of decay. Different species of fungi are able to break down different components of wood, and can coexist in the same dead tree, feeding on their preferred part of the process.

Peniophora lycii was one of three species of fungi that happened to be feeding on this fallen shagbark hickory branch from my front yard. The fruiting body it produces looks like a thin powdery coating of paint, but it is essentially a very narrow and wide mushroom. I have adapted a common name from one that's already out there (using the American spelling of the word "gray"), which describes the color of the crust, not the type of wood it feeds on.

Comments

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

Looks like parts of the Martian polar regions.