Every Sunday there is also a new episode of the Stuifmail podcast. Listen to the podcast here:
Waiting for privacy settings…
What was under Kees’ laurel bush?
Kees Smulders found something strange under his laurel bush and sent me a photo. It is a fungus with the beautiful name ‘collared earthstar’. Nineteen types of earth stars occur in our country. The earth star starts as a kind of ball. This is the fruiting body. When this is ripe, the outer layers open. These outer layers, also called slips, then bend in a star shape around the fruiting body. Inside you can see a smaller ball containing the spore mass. An opening is then created in the center of this smaller ball through which the spores come out. Collared Earth stars are saprophytes and therefore live on dead organic material.
Waiting for privacy settings…
Does this yellow thing fall under the mushrooms?
Jet Eltink and Diana van der Veeken came across something strange in a tree and they wondered whether that strange thing also falls under the mushrooms. The strange thing they saw is a yellow fungus and they are indeed classified as fungi, but we do not call them a mushroom. These fungi are easy to recognize by their jelly-like yellow color. In the beginning the fruit body is orange-yellow in color. As they age, the color fades to sulfur yellow, becoming almost white as they decompose.
Yellow mushrooms grow almost all year round, especially when it starts to get cold at the end of autumn. You encounter them on dead branches and on the trunks of various deciduous trees such as beech, oak, ash, hornbeam and hazel. In the Netherlands they are known as inedible fungi, but they are eaten in the Far East. Be careful with this, because the yellow mushrooms that grow there may be different from those here in the Netherlands. Perhaps because they grow on a different type of substrate there.
A drone or an insect?
Karel den Biggelaar found a strange insect in the kitchen, but at first he thought he saw a mini drone flying. The insect that Karel saw belongs to the feather moth family. This is a convolvulus moth. Feather moths are moths that assume a T-shape when at rest. This ‘T’ is caused by the fact that these insects have deep cuts in their fore and hind wings. These wings are often rolled and stand away from the body. You can encounter wind feather moths almost all year round. They hibernate as adults.
A foreign cockroach
Monique Ariëns saw something crawling past her lens very quickly and she wondered what kind of strange crawler it was. I only came across that strange crawler once and it turned out to be an Australian cockroach. These cockroaches are originally found in tropical parts of the world. So they are insects that need warm temperatures and high humidity. In the Netherlands they are mainly found in greenhouses, breeding greenhouses, swimming paradises and pet shops.
But in recent years this has also been possible outdoors in the Netherlands. I am therefore curious where Monique encountered this fast and strange rascal. Australian cockroaches are true vegetarians and therefore live only on plants, unlike other cockroaches that can eat almost anything organic.
What kind of fungus is this?
Wim Vogel asked me if I had any idea what kind of fungus was on this birch and sent me a photo. I immediately think of an orange vein fungus, but a somewhat older species. This orange vein fungus belongs to the crust fungus family and occurs on all kinds of tree species. The fungus lives on dead wood and causes white rot in dead trees. You can also encounter them on healthy trees, but on dead branches and not on the healthy part. In addition, on dead trunks and stumps. In our country you can encounter the orange vein fungus all year round, but in principle they only appear in the summer. You will not see them during harsh winters, because they cannot withstand them.
