Fungi Friday 🍄

The Jungfrau mountains, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, May 2024

Wow, the Swiss Alps are incredible! They are also quite wet, which means that I managed to find some fungi there when visiting in late-May 2024.

The fungi were found during short walks in steep woodland and pics were taken with my phone (Pixel 7a). I found myself relying on my phone because it was too tiring dropping to my haunches to use my camera, so I wasn’t focusing on quality here.

I’ve separated this post into locations rather than organism types as it’s all geography to me.

Grindelwald area

Grindelwald is a village that has grown into a popular tourist resort in the shadow of the Eiger. To the east of the busy centre there are some exceptional walks with nice riverside woodlands and picturesque mountain wildflower meadows. In spring these walks are a much better option than getting a cable car up high (1700-2300m) that will just drop you back a few months into winter! And up there in the clouds the views are not always certain, let alone the shrooms

I found these mushrooms growing in the alpine zone above the tree line (reached by cable car at Pfingstegg so not too high). I don’t know what they are and don’t expect to ID them anytime soon!

Lichens were surprisingly few and we didn’t see any fluffy beard lichens (Usnea). Dog lichens were fairly frequent on mossy rocks in higher woodlands.

This lovely dramatic polypore was a treat. I was playing with the selfie camera to try and get an interesting perspective. The underside image does show its place in the woodland nicely.

Red belted/banded polypore is something you don’t find often in the UK so it’s nice to see it on the continent. This was growing on conifer trunks used as a retaining wall alongside a trail/forestry track.

I am fairly sure this is a Gandomera bracket, which can be seen all year round due to its conkiness.

In the meadows near our chalet my wife spotted this trio of meadow puffballs. The meadows were in their prime at this stage, and we didn’t venture in on foot (I think it’s prohibited as they’re cut for hay) so it was nice to be greeted by some on the margins.

I didn’t get great pics of this mushroom because the ascent was steep and I didn’t have the energy to take my heavy bag off and use my camera properly. I am happy to guess this is St. George’s mushroom from this view, but I may be wrong. It’s probably the right time of year considering spring happens later at higher altitude.

This lovely polypore was in a much more comfortable spot for photography!

Eiger Glacier

The Eiger (the ‘Ogre’ in English) dominated the Grindelwald valley. No I didn’t climb it, but we did use our Bernese Oberland passes to take the cable car to its glacier (Gletscher) on the Eiger Express. All the high trails were closed due to avalanche or rockfall risk.

Sunburst lichen at 2300m on the Eiger Glacier (Gletscher). There were several of these sunburst lichens on the structure built up there to house the cable car terminal and the train to Kleine Scheidegg.

The good people of iNaturalist have suggested this is Rusavskia elegans, elegant sunburst lichen.

Woodlands around Lake Brienz (Giessbach)

We took the ferry on Lake Brienz to Giessbach falls and walked along the wooded slopes back to Isaltwald. The woods were really interesting and the views of the lake and peaks across were stunning. There were a few things fruiting there along the trail.

Next to the roaring waterfall at Giessbach this cup-like fungus was exposed on a bank. I would guess this was one of the Peziza species but iNaturalist is suggesting it could be a saddle fungus (Helvella). Interesting!

I enjoyed the orange glow to the edge of this wet bracket. This might be anise mazegill. It was growing on a fallen tree trunk.

This extensive tripe fungus (Auricularia mesenterica) was growing by a lovely viewpoint of Lake Brienz. This will look very nice indeed when the autumn comes. I thought this was turkey tail at first but iNaturalist helped to confirm it was tripe fungus. It is definitely meatier than turkey tail.

And finally, we spotted this little group of lovely pearl-coloured mushrooms. I’m not sure what they are but they were the most photogenic mushrooms of the trip. The scale isn’t well represented here (soz) but they were about 1cm in height.

Thanks for reading.