Observaciones de martin_livezey

White crust on bark of long-burning split red oak. Microscopy shows only hyphae, occasionally branched, rarely clamped, no basidia or spores. Fibrillate sporocarp softened /restored quickly in water. Yellow in KOH see photo #5.

There is fine green-brown moss near and below this crust and the crust seems to like it... or the moss has just died in winter. The dead moss seems to have stained the crust red-brown.

Due to cracks in the white crust after 5 days of drizzle, I conclude this is an annual which has died as a result of dry or cold weather. Not sure how I can prove that. There appears to be an actively growing crust in photo #4, but I am not sure it is the same thing. Probably growing on Tulip poplar. Microscopy suggestive, but not conclusive.

Red stain, bacteria, or fungi on hickory or oak branch in my backyard …. at 25x, it looks like paint. At 250x or 1000x it looks like paint or a thin jelly but without substantial hyphae or other structures. There are several types of spores, maybe a schleroderma, as I would expect, but none that I can clearly tie to the red stain.

I soaked these magnolia cones a couple days to prepare for planting them in a flower pot to see if a mushroom will grow out of them. To my surprise there is a rich black ring around the dish they soaked in. The cones are now planted, but the black ring is shown here at 1000x. what is it? alternaria?

Tiny barely pink ring on bark. Hard to show the correct color in the sunlight or in the microscope without doping the photos.

After 4 days in a shallow dish of water the pink masses have become soft and gelatinous piles of conidia, some apparently in chains. Connective tissue is not visible.

Ostioles of perithecia visible from above at 25x; cross sections of nearly spherical perithecia show black material below and bright red material above, hidden by the brown surface of the hypoxylon.

Ostiols start to protrude 24 hours after being placed in water.

Recent freezing temps have given this exidia a cracked outer layer that can be seen at right as red-brown patches. My question: why so many cubic crystals on the surface and between the patches?

Still struggling to find spores and basidia...,