I immediately thought of Helle when I found these beauties. I was in Evanson (near the foot of a lighthouse.) Helle was all the way over in Denmark, probably near a currant field as I snapped this picture. I suspect she was painting something. It was a warm day—one of the first in a rather sporadic chain of warm days. We’ve since had lots of rain, since then, and so I’m anxious to get back and see just how big these shrooms have grown. They’re not your average, everyday shrooms. These are the sorts of shelf-fungi that grow all around the Chicago area. They start off small and harmless enough, until…well…until it rains. Following the rain, they grow…and grow…and grow, until you’ve got shroom-colored dinner platters climbing a tree. Okay, that might be a small exaggeration: I have it on good authority that these shelf fungi aren’t very interested in climbing. They’ve secured a wonderful bit of fungal real-estate and so they’re staying where they are with fungal real-estate prices being what they are. There’s an interesting ant-mound nearby too, and so I’m sure that the ant colony in question will undoubtedly utilize these shelf-shaped-pre-dinner-platter shrooms for their annual ant-colony picnics. Or maybe not. I can’t say that Chicago has such a large variety of fungal inhabitants. We have a few breeds and an imported species of slime mold that I simply call “Fred.” I must admit, Fred isn’t a very exciting sort of slime mold. It doesn’t like to move around as much. In fact, it looks a bit like melting peanut butter, drizzled with caramel, and then it grows a garish, yellow afro. That’s about it. We have a few very small shrooms: with each cap approximately the size of a letter “o” in this sentence. But they’re fragile and dogs like to step on them, thus they are very hard to find and photograph (unless you’re a dog, stepping on them, but then you wouldn’t be photographing them, would you?) So, if you’re in the Chicago area, then Shelf Fungi are probably your best bet, if you’re interested in extravagant fungal things growing in interesting (and sometimes not-so-interesting) places. As a child, I’d amassed quite a collection of these fungi. They harden with age and turn all sorts of interesting shades of tree-bark-brown. Woodlice like to amble around under them after a rain, and millipedes generally leave their scent-marks not too far away. These shrooms (they grow crinolines, after a while) are probably at the core of a very interesting, and very small biosphere. They’ve always fascinated me: partly because they grow so large, and partly because if you catch them from the right angle, they look like flying saucers that have docked with a rather tree-like mother ship. I suspect that they are flying saucers of a sort, piloted by…well…probably by woodlice undertaking all sorts of interesting scientific and colonial ventures. How do you think woodlice have become the most successful land-dwelling crustaceans on Earth, after all? They have technology; they fly around in flying-saucer mushrooms and then park them on the sides of trees when they’re not in use. Okay, maybe not, but it’s an entertaining thought. And so, in honor of Helle and the wonderful shrooms she’s posted in the past, I’m putting these up and dedicating them to her. It’s not actually fungus season yet, not in Chicago, anyway, but with the amount of moisture we’ve been getting, I’m sure I’ll find some shrooms, somewhere: of a species I’ve scarcely seen before. Or maybe I’ll just find more shelf fungi, grown to the size of Latvia. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great weekend.