fungus and Haida Gwaii

Fungus or Fungi is actually called a kingdom – the fungus kingdom.
It’s weird stuff as it’s the sort of thing you don’t want growing on your body but in nature it provides some incredible visual delights, not to mention just how interesting they are as living organisms. Fungi provide a critical part of nature's continuous rebirth as fungi recycle dead organic matter into nutrients.

We have a big old Maple tree, growing in the very back of the property, where new fungus grows for us every year. I always trip out on how; in just a matter of days, these babies suddenly grow out of the side of the tree. There always huge, fleshy and so organic looking. I get a kick out of them because they're large enough to sit on if they didn’t break with the weight of me on them. I can see why gnomes, fairies, and pixies sit on them in our folklore.
Fungus is a visual delight to look at, from all perspectives.

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The tops are smooth, in as much as a cedar-shingled roof is smooth.

The sides reach out like large hands and fingers inviting us to succumb to their comfort in sitting on them as described above.

From the bottom, they are a strange living organism of soft, fleshy airy little cells that cause my mind to wander.

The bottoms look like a sponge or a coral from under the sea. They provide an architecture even more abstract and bizarre than the sweet honeycomb.

All the above images are from the same fungus, taken on the same day at the same shooting.
You can click on them to enlarge them.

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Sadly, their life is ephemeral. I guess if a fungus is growing on your toes or feet this short-lived character is a good thing. Those mushrooms that pop up after a evening rain and are gone by the noonday sun always blow me away and that’s not from consuming them, I just like looking at them. The funguses that grow on our grand old Maple tree live for about a month.

The best funguses I have ever seen where while walking in a remote forest of giant Alaska Sitka Spruce on the Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwaii. My wife and I made this sojourn a few years ago. First, we drove 40 miles of logging roads, made of shot rock that could easily take out all four tires or putting a gapping hole in your oil pan. Often on these roads you come onto giant logging trucks with tires the size of pickup trucks which quickly forced you to the side of the road or perish as they are not able to stop for you. We then walked for several hours through what was paradise, leaving me to feel at times that we were the first people to ever see or walk there. Mushrooms, growing the size of small tress dotted the moss covered forest floor. Once the beauty of mushrooms has enticed our scrutiny of the forest floor, we couldn't help but notice Lichens as well. All over the forest floor and up the trees grew Lichens grew; they are a symbiotic union between fungus and algae. Funguses were growing from the side of trees that were so large that whole cities of fairies or pixies could live there. All of this under the canopy of 50-metre tall trees, laden in a blankets of moss, reaching down to the forest floor. It was incredible, a spirit quest and I certainly had an epiphany on this walk. We walked through this forest for hours until we came out on a snow capped mountain fjord or inlet on the Pacific Ocean, the west side of the Haida Gwaii. It was one of the greatest blessings of my life to stand there amongst these 3 to 4 metre (sometimes even larger) wide trees, some of which stood before Captain James Cook even sailed up these western coastal waters more than a two hundred years ago.

So, when I look at these fungus now growing in my own domain I think back on that marvelous journey and am once again grateful for the privilege. That said, had we of not taken that voyage to Haida Gwaii, these fungus growing on our grand old Maple tree are beautiful enough on their own.I hope you like my images.

GP

Ps – on a funny note: I thought I really was in paradise until we turned a bend and standing there in front of us was a huge black bear. Fortunately, the bear was stuffed with berries, revealed in the scat he left for us so he couldn’t be bothered with having to kill a meal; us. Not to mention the Mountain Lions that roam these woods. It of been paradise if I didn’t have to be on guard for them.