The Contented Naturalist

It’s been a pretty good year for mushrooms. I’ve found bright red chanterelles, gooey inkcaps, and more. But the weirdest and maybe creepiest has been the globby fungus I found oozing dark amber liquid near the bottom of a tree.

I think it’s Pseudoinonotus dryadaeus, also known as Oak Bracket. I don’t know whether the tree it was near was an oak, but one of the blobs is growing around an oak leaf– so there’s definitely an oak somewhere nearby.

I haven’t had a chance to look for more resources on fungi that might tell me exactly what that amber liquid is. Or why it’s that color. Maybe it’s related to tannins from the oak tissues it grows on. That could make sense. I also read that Oak Bracket leads to further decay in its host tree. I know mushrooms are actually the fruiting bodies (basically the reproductive organs) of a fungus colony. Underground, the colony is a massive branching network of threads. I knew fungi was weird, but this oozing species is one of the weirdest I’ve encountered so far.