Go boldly, science fiction covers!

Goose barnacles and fate-makers

Goose barnacles seem born to be metaphors. They attach themselves before they are old enough to think (not that they are known for existentialism at even their most mature state) to a randomness of flotsam and in this case, the jetsam of an undersea volcano.

Yet unlike people who could pry themselves free from an opinion or loyalty with a bit of thought, goose barnacles have no choice. Once left high and dry, they die with their mouths agape.

Inexorability: the personality trait of bracket fungi

A portrait of two beauties - quince and persimmon

and they know how to wear their perfumes

This year the orchard has been generous to all. A family of crows has enjoyed many persimmons, the wallabies have had parties under the trees, eating what they can reach and what the crows during the day, and the fruit bats at night, drop. This year the true complexity of the quince comes out best when the fruit is eaten out of hand, raw, cut with a fruit knife. Quince is quite ergonomic, too, which is one way to say that it feels as if its curvy heft with that slight down, is meant to be fondled. The persimmons are also sensuality plus. One counterpoint to their passionate hue is the slight stink of their beautiful veined leaves.

Neptune's shaving brush

What is art, but noticing what is

More hairy mushrooms

As with yesterday's mystery fungus, also growing now in the (at last, wet) forest in Narrawallee, NSW (SE Australia), these could be described as having a fibrillose-scaly cap surface. Are all three Cuphocybe species?

I hope I have a name as witty as 'lawyer's wig'

If you know what I am called, please advise. And how do I react to people eating me?

Note from the observer: There is nothing that can make a human feel as undeveloped as a walk in the forest. We want to name everything and if we don't know the names, feel stupid. But why does knowing the name make us any the wiser if that is all we know? Anyway, I'll say rashly here that I think this might be labelled: Cuphocybe spp.

Here's another picture, one that annoys me greatly because I botched the focus so badly and the cap is overexposed, but this view does eliminate some possibilities. The stem shows best here..

Fungoid faiths

Some gilled mushrooms point to the Paper Wasp as their Creator


while age turns many a boletus to Sharpei.

More fungiphilia & relateds in Medlar Comfitland:

Under a mushroom and that port wine birthmark

The strength of a mushroom, in any tongue

Skin, Fiction, Mushrooms & Progress

Another magnificent insignificant: mushroom-scented 'coral'

Fungi on a mushroom

Postcard from the Fifth Kingdom

Cuckoobooky