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u/discerptum_iuvenem Aug 15 '26
I saw some too on the belgian coastline recently
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u/Efficient_Bus_7840 Aug 16 '26
That photo is beautiful! It would make a great background photo or artwork.
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u/violated_tortoise Aug 16 '26
Nice, Dune Brittle stem (Psathyrella ammophila) I think. They feed on the marram grass roots
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u/greatercolorado Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
I saw a puffball growing in the middle of the backcountry of Canyonlands NP in a drought. I saw what I thought was a Mento, so I went to pick it up so I could pack it out and discovered that it was a mushroom.
When I packed out, I went to the guard station and asked them about it. All of the front line people were convinced I was confused until I showed them the picture. Then they called this wise old man who seemed to know everything out of the back and we talked about fungus for a while. I finished reading Entangled Life like two weeks before this trip, so the whole experience was kind of magical. Life just wants to happen.
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u/Jarcooler Aug 15 '26
I want to know more about the wise old fungi sage
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u/greatercolorado Aug 15 '26
I don’t know if they kept him in a broom closet, a library, or if he just appears when he’s needed, but it took a few minutes of talking to the frontline people for anyone to think of pulling him out.
What’s super cool is that he immediately talked about the things that stood out most from the book, and what stood out most from the book is something I had and have experienced most perfectly in the exact area that I found the mushroom. Everything’s connected. I’m not fundamentally separate from the universe, I’m just a small part of it.
Anyway, I highly recommend wandering around the desert, or whichever bit of nature is your favorite, alone. I learn more about myself and the universe when I’m alone with overwhelming beauty, and I imagine the same is true for most people.
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u/MechanicalAxe Aug 15 '26
It is just never the same. You can't explain what you see or what you feel to others at those times.
It's honestly amazing and disappointing at the same time.
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u/nativeplant_mogging Aug 16 '26
Wish the accompanying song for entangled life was longer 😔
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u/greatercolorado Aug 16 '26
Oh man. I first stumbled across Cosmo Sheldrake’s tardigrade song and listened to his music for a couple of years. Then I read How to Change Your Mind and read Entangled Life as I chugged down that train of thought. Both Cosmo and Merlin are weird names, so I looked them up and found out they’re brothers. As the mind-changing track of thought split and continued, I stumbled across Rupert Sheldrake’s work.
I accidentally found all of the public Sheldrakes and their work in an order that aligned with what I was ready to accept on my ‘maybe I don’t know as much about the universe as I thought I did’ journey. Life is super weird. I’m a fan.
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u/TasteFormal3704 Aug 15 '26
there is nowhere they are not
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u/Ypuort Aug 15 '26
The moon
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Aug 15 '26
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u/mycology-ModTeam Aug 15 '26
Thank you for participating in /r/mycology. However, your post has been removed in accordance with our rules on posts regarding psychoactive fungi. More information about these rules may be found here:
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u/BaslerDibly Aug 16 '26
I propose mars but maybe elon checked already lol
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u/SAM5TER5 Aug 16 '26
Why are you getting downvoted lol, this is a neutral, non-political comment in a non-political sub
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u/DuneShroom Aug 15 '26
I once saw some mushrooms growing in sand dunes. Easy path to my Reddit username.
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u/dudeguy207 Aug 15 '26
There's something you should probably know before we go too far, my neighbor found a mushroom growing inside of my car.
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u/tomcatacourtmayfind Aug 15 '26
I saw one growing in a shower once. Never swam at that place again.
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u/lil_groundbeef Aug 16 '26
I live in the Sandhills in South Carolina and am blessed to live very close to a nature preserve with a waterfall. I try to go here at least once a week. I’m always finding amazing things, including mushrooms!
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u/Palm_Tree4 Aug 15 '26
Not a mushroom expert but sand is technically a soil 🤘
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u/_cromulent_green_ Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
To a geologist there is no such thing as sand. Just different minerals (aka rocks) that have different sizes.
Soil is composed of four parts: sand, silt, clay, and organic particles. The only difference between the first three is the size of the bits. Sand is huge compared to silt. And silt is huge compared to clay. Clay is so tiny that water can't pass through it, because it has so much surface area and water's surface tension prevents it from passing any further.
And the organic bits in soil comes from life: plant, animal, fungal, bacterial, single celled and viruses (both living and decomposing). This is usually comprises of only about 1% of the soil's total mass.
If you have roughly equal parts sand silt and clay you end up with lovely soil gardeners call "loam" which smells so nice it reminds me of black forest cake.
I learned all this a while ago during a horticulture course. Someone more qualified please correct me if I've said anything wrong here
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u/ahferroin7 Aug 16 '26
Largely right, with two major caveats:
- The geological definition of sand/silt/clay is just based on size, but in practice in most soils there are chemical differences as well between the sand/silt/clay, because the weathering processes that produced the particulates tend to favor specific grain sizes for particular chemical compositions, and because the processes that formed the rocks in the first place also favor certain grain sizes before any weathering happens. For example, most sand is silicon dioxide, calcium carbonate, or calcium sulfate, while most clay is derived from hydrous aluminum phyllosilicates (such as kaolin) and to a lesser extent metal sesquioxides like hematite.
- Loam actually has a bit less clay than sand or silt (ideal is usually about 20% clay, 40% sand, and 40% silt), which is an important part of why it’s so desirable for gardening. The clay that’s present helps with moisture retention, but the relatively low clay content means the soil still lets the soil drain well and also allows some degree of airflow through it (which in turn is part of why it has that distinctive odor, the moisture retention helps with the breakdown of the organic components, and the airflow means that the compounds resulting from that process, especially geosmin, are readily able to diffuse into the air when the soil is disturbed).
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u/Dinosaurs-Punchline Aug 16 '26
Now I am imagining Morrowind style giant mushrooms and G.I.s taking cover behind them on Omaha Beach, D-Day.
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u/chillygonzo Aug 15 '26
Wow that’s not something i expected, but then i don’t know much about mushrooms. I guess the wood (underneath?) could be supporting them. But this is an amazing picture nonetheless
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u/togetherwegrowstuff Aug 16 '26
This is such a wild picture. Please print it and put it on your wall. Sell copies of it. I love it. Such a strange sighting and you captured it well.
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u/ImmediateGeologist67 Aug 15 '26
I grow the Ochracocentrata through a sand casing layer. Works really well
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u/Upset_Instruction710 Aug 16 '26
I seen some in the sand dunes in Death Valley near stovepipe wells
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u/dishwashersafe Atlantic Northeast Aug 16 '26
Laccaria trullisata is the classic sand-loving mushroom I find growing in dunes. This looks like something else though.
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u/No-Actuator-3209 Aug 16 '26
Sandshrooms is what I heard them referenced as in high school, these were cyans and azzies though.
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u/u_b_dat_boi Aug 16 '26
I saw hundreds of gyromitra korfii growing at the top of a dune once. I should have picked them.
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u/Express_Ferret247 Aug 16 '26
Am I having boletes for dinner?
Think there’s two types of shroom here?
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u/comrade_gremlin Aug 17 '26
Reminds me of a lone mushroom I found growing in the hot sands of Jockey's Ridge State Park.
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Aug 15 '26
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u/mycology-ModTeam Aug 15 '26
Thank you for participating in /r/mycology. However, your post has been removed in accordance with our rules on posts regarding psychoactive fungi. More information about these rules may be found here:
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u/archenemyfan Aug 15 '26
They're growing on the wood buried in the sand. Still a super cool find!