These colorful
mushrooms grow in large colonies on mossy tree trunks. I am not a mycologist,
so I don't know the identity of them, but they are wonderfully photogenic.
They look like a troop of helmeted fairies clustered together! I checked
out some books at the library to try to identify them, only to discover
that identifying fungi is a field of study by itself. It is estimated that
there are over 1.5 million species of fungi and only about 80 thousand have
been identified. So I will just have to be happy photographing them and
leave the task of identifying them to the experts!