The Kingdom of Fungi

There are about 100,000 known species of mushrooms (paddy mushroom and others), rusts, mold, mildews, stinkhorns, puffballs, truffles and other organisms assigned to the Kingdom of fungi, and lately founds new varieties of hundred new species that describes every years. They look with an astonishing variety of shapes, colors and sizes, from brilliant red cups and orange jellylike masses to strange fungi resembling golf-balls, bird nests with eggs, starfish, parasols and even male genitalia.

The below are example of their new founded fungi:
Witches’ butter (Dacrymyces Palmatus):

A brightly yellow color that grows on moss covered logs in the rain soaked Douglas fir forest of Oregon.

Earth Stars:
This fungi usually called as “earthstar”, named like that because the outer wall of the spore bearing the body splits open into a star. This fungi is founded in Florida and tentatively identified as Myriostoma Coliforme, actually there are many species of earth stars throughout North America.

Other kind of earth stars called as “acrobatic earthstar” (Geastrum fornicatum), founded in San Diego County. This fungi is like an alien as on the film TV that often we seen, resemblance to a human figure. Like the properties of earth stars, outer of leathery wall (peridium) splits open into the rays of a star, but the rays fold down into “legs” and supported with the spherical spore case that sits on a short stalk or pedicel.

Stinkhorn Fungi
This fungus is a member of phallus-like stinkhorn family (phallaceae). The foul smelling fungus (like rafflesia arnoldii), will attract flies to its spore laden, slimy body, increasing odds of its spores being dispersed to new habitats, and may “scent” your entire back yard. As on the picture a common fly attracted to this fungus. This fungus begins as an egglike body beneath the soil (similar with rafflesia arnoldii growth step). An erect phallus-like stalk breaks through the “egg,” forming a cuplike basal volva as the stalk rapidly elongates. The swollen head or cap is coated with a black, putried, musilaginous mass of spore slime.