Photo collection - Cinnabar polypore
The polypore mushrooms are a diverse and varied category. This is certainly one of the most colourful.
Underneath, you can see the hundreds of little pores that extend 1-2cm deep and are full of the mushroom's spores. The latin name is Pycnoporus cinnibarinus and is in the family Polyporaceae of polypores.
The top side of the mushroom is an orange-yellow colour not unlike a pumpkin. However when you look underneath you can see the brilliant orange pigment produced by the mushroom, a chemical known as cinnabarinic acid. There are lots of types of polypore mushrooms and this is only one, but out of the many out there this is certainly one of the most recognizable and brightly coloured. The edibility is not known.
Happy hunting!
All pictures are taken by myself and released to the community under CC0 (Public domain)
beautiful mushroom! Thanks for sharing!
Nice one! There are really alot of interesting chemicals in mushrooms like hydrazine.
You can check @dber 's page. There are lots of really interesting mushrooms there
By the way, we had establish a new tag sciencepic for science pictures and feel free to use it :D
You can check the detail here
You should re-tag this as the colorchallenge as well - I think tuesday is Orange - two birds withone stone.