What’s so great about chanterelles

That’s a comment, not a question.

This lacy, ruffly, scalloped, swooping Baroque sculpture is the beautiful underside of a chanterelle. When I turned it over and saw this I heard music and faeries appeared.

Then I ate it

Crown-tipped coral

Artomyces pyxidatus. Or Clavicorona pyxidata, same thing. Welcome to the wacky world of mushroom taxonomy; I can’t keep up. Something to do with DNA (the mushroom’s, not mine).

Anyway, these always grow on wood, like well-rotted logs. None of this "can look like it's growing from soil but it's really on an underground root" business. They grow ON LOGS.

The little distinctive crown tips are there even on very small young ones.

Fun with lichen

Lichen on a gravestone, originally uploaded by Mycologista.

Lichen on a gravestone in Mansfield, MO.

We went to this old cemetery on the way home after several days of playing in the water on the Little Niangua. There was great lichen in wild colors growing on lots of headstones, and it was all dry as a bone, as it hadn't rained in several weeks. I can only imagine how technicolor it would be after a long, cool rainy spell...

But, now I know a good place to look for stuff. Lichen, in cemeteries.