Doug commented about these in my last post. I still don't know what they are exactly but I still would guess that they may have something to do with reproduction. Most everything I have read, states that the spores are produced and released from underneath the shelf fungi, still these little projections on top are quite a mystery as to their function.
Bracket/Shelf Fungi
Sony DSC-W5
1/10 sec. & 1/6 sec. @ f/2.8 ISO 100
Meiji EMZ-13TR Stereomicroscope
Micro Lite FV 1000 Fluorescent ring illuminator
Bracket/Shelf Fungi...whats on them again?
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Whatever thay are, they are interesting looking at a higher magnification Ken. maybe a germinated spore from another fungi . Doesn`t look like any damage is occuring to the host. First picture, upper left, looks like another one is coming up next to the other one Do you have any shelf fungi that you did not soak in water (for a control)?
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda
Doug Breda
Doug relied:
I am also a member of the University of British Columbia Botanical Gardens website. They have a Fungi and Lichen Forum there. Check it out: http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/forums/index.phpHow did you find that out?
Cyclops replied:
Not exactly there Cyclops. You see lichens are not a fungi but an organism consisting of two totally different species of organisms. One that is a fungi and the other an algae. Combined they form an organism or a lichen through what some term to be a symbiotic relationship. Meaning that they both benifit in some way one from another. Now I myself, who likes to stir up the waters a bit from time to time, think that it is more a case of controlled parasitism, where the fungi actually captures and compells the algae into its service. Much the same as does a spider with its prey but without killing it. The fungi is an ascomycete which is accostomed to feed off of anothers work and therefore farms, you could say, the algae to benifit from the carbohydrates produced by the algae through the process of photosynthesis. So what we have here is a lichen that is growing on another fungi which, I don't think now, is an ascomycete, or a parasitic fungi. If this continues, I wonder, could lichenization begen here and involve the assimilation of the bracket fungi also or could the lichen just continue on as an epiphyte, shall we say, on or of the bracket fungi. (Whew!)Amazing Ken theyre like fungi on fungi!