An innocent and insignificant mushroom that showed itself, not to reveal the real devil things coming in this post...
A delayed Halloween post this would be if I would love that event or give any importance to it. But I am ignoring it, never liked it, also, it was not popular back in my time. Now, it is not my cup of tea. However, witches and devils showed indeed this Monday to me, you would not believe. I didnt believe my eyes either, I was shocked at what I was seeing. But let us go from the beginning.
This Monday I had a free day. Son either had school, so we planned a short trip with our friends. They moved recently from the city center of Valencia to a nearby town, which can be seen as a suburban area of the city. Apartments in the city center are becoming too expensive. Also more tranquility we can find outside of the concrete jungle, so the decision of moving was a good one. Before going to their place, we met in a place in the mountain. Hiking was chosen as the best way of spending the day, as the weather was really nice after light rain that surprised us the day before.
And if the rain decides to give life to this planet, you know, mushrooms are coming out. They waited patiently to get a bit of humidity and water drops, so they can show themselves the very next day. My friend found a bunch of them and came to show me proudly. Well, he couldn't tell me the name of the findings, but I loved the shape of them. The hats are from those elegant ones, although they do not stand out with the color. Just the normal, light brown small forest mushrooms.
I am also showcasing them, being pretty sure they can not make any harm to our hands. Were they edible? I dont know, they dont look like some dangerous ones or any of those that can bring you some craziness. Still, I didnt take them home, I was a bit sorry actually he took them and that way brought death to them. Ow, death...are we approaching the scary part of the post? Not really, still, I have to show some other ones too.
Under one tree we found yellow, shiny, almost fluorescent yellow mushrooms. The camera may not be able to convey the right color, and I was not able to capture a better picture. I tried, but the other people who hiked there were a little surprised at what one person was doing there in some weird poses. The gills of it were nice too, like a leaf of a cabbage, but in small. Not sure if edible, but probably not, the bright yellow color doesn't give a lot of confidence here.
If you are not anymore willing to wait for the interesting part of the findings, then I have to reveal the witch thing! We have found The witch's heart!!!
I would never imagine in my life that I could find this so special one, here in Spain. I saw once, here in hive, that @borjan found it, but at his place. So, this is Clathrus ruber, also called red cage or witch's heart. The color is something between pink, orange, and bright red and it is how it caught our attention among the grey leaves. The shape is an oval hollow sphere with interlaced branches. Wow, I was delighted and here I was not shy to spend more time trying to get any decent photo, although I can not say any of them are of superb quality. I made some photos both with a camera and phone. Anyway, people were approaching and asking what is this? I proudly remembered that post of Borjan and answered with confidence that it is the heart of the witch ;)) They never heard of that but they were happy to learn it from me.
We found several of them, some had this oval shape, but some of them had been already a bit broken... not having already the perfectly round shape. In the bottom part of some of them, we could see a crumpled, white membrane, like a soft, white shell of an egg. And, it was not all. I think the last one that we saw was something called Devil's fingers - Clathrus archeri. The fingers were pink, more bright but I couldn't make a better photo with the camera. I tried with the phone too, but not better either. However, my happiness didnt diminish, I was so excited we saw them. So, this scary story is over, the witch didn't do any bad thing to us... The devil could not scare me either, I would accept the challenge to see it again and maybe could bring some better photos here for any next edition of #FungiFriday , an event held by @ewkaw :)
