Weird reddish fungus amongus

“When backpacking Saturday, we came across what kinda had the shape of shelf mushrooms on a downed branch. There were quite a few, but they were obviously new. There were mushy, jelly like and kind of a deep, dark maroon color. Elementary 1 touched them (ICK!!!!!) They kinda sloughed off at the edges. And she also found a tiny worm within the yucky stuff!

Any ideas what this is? Sorry, I wouldn't break to take a picture of this stuff. lol

Didn't smoke it either, so can't tell you about hallucinagenic (sp?) or deadly qualities, lol. BUT, Prosecutor always looks like a bunny, right???







LOL! No, we barely looked at it, it was so freaky..........
last edited: 4/05/06 9:57:39 AM”

“Sounds like a slime mold. Some of them grow so fast you can watch them. How large were they?”

“My guess is that it was a jelly mushroom called exidia recisa. My nephew just did a mushroom project for school so we were looking up all kinds of mushrooms and looking for them out in the woods. I remember seeing a class of jelly mushrooms that sounds like what you described. There are over 10,000 species of mushrooms in North America and they are still discovering new ones.
last edited: 4/05/06 10:31:48 AM”

“A bunny...LMAO! You don't smoke fungus, ya numbnuts. :-D That sounds extremely freaky, though.”

“The largest were maybe 2" in diameter. Kind of a rough, jelly-ish diameter. ;-)”

“EWWWW, yuck, RichB, I think you might be right! I "googled" and this photo looks like what we saw:

http://americanmushrooms.com/images/024_Exidia_recisa.htm”

“mmmm apricots”

“Lizs......I'm glad you reported it was on a downed tree and not some body part.”

“PHEW!!!”

“I learned a lot helping my nephew with his project and thought it a was great project for the kids. Those mushrooms that grow on tree bark digest the lignin in the tree to help recycle it back into the forest. It's really an incredible web of life out there and the mushrooms are like the recycling crew out in the forest.”

“hey, I've found those here in texas in the woods........”