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Shelf Fungus

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Turkey Tail Mushrooms and Lichen (prints available here)

I’ve taken up macro photography. It’s something I’ve been saying for the past 7 or more years that I’d love to do. And now, I’m officially doing it. We recently watched a movie on Amazon Prime video called “The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn.” In it, the character of Noah Dearborn, played by the incomparable Sidney Poitier, asks, “What good is wanting to do something without going out and doing it?”

Mushrooms are a great subject for macro photography (here’s a link to all the photos of fungi I’ve taken so far). A big challenge for me at this point is identifying what I’ve taken a picture of. I’ve found that Googling it doesn’t always help me find the answer. It’s hard to even know what to enter as the query. One thing I learned today is that one type of mushroom grows out of decaying logs in the shape of a shelf. It’s called shelf fungus, or bracket fungus. Shelf fungus doesn’t have a stipe (a stem) like other mushrooms do.