A World of Colour and Beauty – “Mushrooms”.

January 5, 2014

When did I start putting a name to things? What did I see when I was very, very young? Living in a world of unidentified colours, light, shapes, sounds and movement must have been indeed a state of bliss. When did red, noisy movement become “bird” or brilliant green become a “leaf”? Were bird and tree a little less amazing as I tucked them away into my brain as identified? I doubt my tiny infant brain was even capable enough to consider such things, but I wonder about those things now.

I love identifying the things in the world around me and learning more about them. When I was in Nigeria, I wanted to identify all the plants and animals – everything – around me. But to the people of the jungle, an antelope, rodent or primate was “bush meat”. Of course they knew details of each of these species intimately, but they really did not understand my need to categorize each animal or bird. It brought me to question that need too – and to question how well we can actually communicate some basic ideas across cultures.

All of which is a long and rambling introduction to this first “fungus blog”. I took many of these pictures because the colour, structure or situation really attracted me. But, as a biologist I set out to identify some of these amazing fungi and found that I am certainly not a mushroom expert!!! I have set myself a challenge for next year – to properly identify the fungi I find around me.

In the meantime, I have given general names to the mushrooms and other fungi in these photos. I hope you enjoy them – and those in the accompanying post. And I hope you enjoy them as washes of colour and beauty – aside from their names and “what they do”.