One rainy night, Jacob and I took his dog, Koda, for a walk on the nearby, forested trails. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I immediately began to see fungi. While Koda was running along the trails on his own, Jacob and I walked and used headlamps to see our footing. There was a lot of mud but it was a nice temperature and I barely noticed the rain once I started noticing the fungi. Most of the fungi we noticed were on fallen trees. The highlight of the walk was seeing a small salamander on a Monotropa uniflora.

Monotropa uniflora, while potentially more strange than any fungi I've researched so far, is actually an herbaceous plant. When I first started seeing M. uniflora, I thought it was a fungus because of where it grows and the fact that every time I saw it, it was either pure white or black. I didn't know of any plant that would be entirely white, and its transition to a black color reminded me of a shaggy ink cap mushroom. After some research, however, I learned that it is definitely a plant, but it is a parasite of fungi. Its dependence on fungi for nutrients explains both its presence in environments where fungi are found and its white color, as it does not need to photosynthesize (and therefore does not need to store chlorophyll). I also learned that when these plants die they turn black. Even though this plant is in an entirely different taxonomic group than fungi, I believe its close relationship to certain fungus species means it belongs on this website.

Below are photos of the various fungi we saw, lit by our headlamps: