What are Wood-Rotters?
They’re fungi that do exactly that. They rot the wood. And in rotting the wood, this class of fungi returns the dead or felled tree—trunk, branches, twigs, roots and all—to the soil. They thereby produce a nutrient-rich humus that’ll support neighbouring trees for centuries to come. Well done, chaps.
What, you thought it a class of fairies? Well, yes, they are that as well. Indeed, perhaps amongst the best known.
Such delicate, lace-trimmed helmets these troopers wear
But not all tree-rotters look like that. Here, three types try to obscure someone’s memorable graffiti
Get a look at those red nipples and stems! Flash, hey.
Though others prefer to kit out in gold and honey
And yet others like to make their mark by sitting on moss . . . here on a fallen willow
While these wood-rotters prefer loads of company. Like an entire army of rotters!
But not this one. Branching out on its own; gold, solitary, and proud!
Compared with the previous, these could be ‘ghost troopers’
Not all rotters are gregarious. Here, some pallid almost-aloners
Perhaps not as flash as those with red knobs. Yet with their glistening hats and their dark red stems, they’re obviously posing for a photo. So I obliged them
Could these rotters be widows, wearing grey veils?
Saving my favourite to last. A cleft-clustering troop with purple-knobbed helmets, all aglisten
crispina kemp 
Congratulations on your skill in writing fungus porn.
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Ah. You noticed. It wasn’t intended. It was merely descriptive. I mean, how else to describe those purple-knobbed helmets, all glistening together? And after all, wood-rotters are about increasing fertility.
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(She did it again!)
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Innocent, the writer claimed at the obscenities trial. It’s all in the mind of the reader. 🙂
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And how did it get into the mind of the reader?
(Oops, sorry, more porn.)
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But you have to admit that is what they look like. And it’s as well I couldn’t find any stinkhorns cos they’re not so much suggestive as unmistakably blatant. X-rated fungi. Cover your eyes, children.
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Yep, looked at pictures of stinkhorns. I now have an idea for an X-rated Halloween horror story, but I don’t think I want to write it. 😉
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I admit, I had intended to post the photos next Sunday, in time for Halloween. But I just couldn’t whittle down the numbers to make it just one post. So, 4 posts of photos. I have grouped them according to habitat and type. And, no, by type I don’t mean hallucinogenic, though there are some of those next week. Or was that an hallucination? Oh, the inherent problems when one’s a high flyer!
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Omigosh you two kill me!
This was as fun to read as your quite-suggestive prose, there Crispina!!
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He is a dear friend, though he lives across the ocean from me. And this blog forms the bulk of our communications.
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Sweet. Thank goodness for the blogosohere
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Absolutely.
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