Ben Mitchell

Photo of a willow trunk with good coverage of green moss and black Ricasolia virens cyanomorphs with a scattering of bright green lobes.

close up of some black, bushy Ricasolia virens thalli with a few bright green lobes budding from them.

Found a big, beautiful patch of Ricasolia virens cyanomorph on a willow near Auchalick Bay. #lichen #ricasolia #cyaonomorph #photosymbiodeme #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Photo of an old, bleached fencepost in gloomy surroundings. Lichens on the top.

Mouldering in a gloomy spot #FencepostOfTheWeek

photo of a crowd of thick, rubbery bracket fungi with fuzzy tops and smooth, translucent undersides.

Tripe fungus - Auricularia mesenterica. Looking like tiers of bizarrely inflated turkey tail brackets. It usually grows on elm wood.

#fungi #auricularia #tripefungus #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #gigha #uk

Minutely Fruticose Jelly Lichens Trying to make sense of some superficially minutely fruticose, corticolous jelly lichens in Cowal.  Working primarily from the BLS  Lichens...

I believe I found Scytinium teretiusculum for the first time a few weeks back. Added it to my image matrix of bushy little jelly lichens that grow on trees: wild-e-eep.blogspot.com/2025/05/minu...

Macro photo of some blue springtails clambering over moss. They are around 2-3mm long.

A bunch of springtails frolicking in the moss.

#springtails #poduromorpha #wildlifephotography #argyll #scotland #uk #collembola

Photo of the floor of an oak wood, covered in mossy tuffets

Found a lumpy bit ^_^

#moss #oak #intothewoods #tuffets #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Photo of the mossy end of a toppled fencepost, in a roll of rusty fence-wire.

This entire fence has been pulled out of the ground and rolled up. It's still providing fertile surfaces for some nice lichens and mosses, though. #FencepostOfTheWeek

Photo of the underside of a leathery lichen

The underside of this lichen has some textures! I think this one is Umbilicaria torrefacta, growing on exposed rocks in a montane environment.

#lichen #umbilicaria #trypophobia #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk #trypophobia

photo of a blue sky with tattered shreds of cloud

Clouds scudding by yesterday.

photo of a thick, fuzzy, orange mass of algal filaments growing on a rock in bright sunshine.

Bright, fuzzy blobs of algae up in the crags of Beinn Bhreac.

#trentepohlia #algae #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

photo of a dense ball of twiggy outgrowths half way along a birch branch. Moss overgrowing the upper surfaces.

A rather mossy witches' broom <3

#betula #moss #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Photo of a stone wall over undulating terrain with low, winter sunlight.

A length of wall running along side the ridge of Beinn Bhreac, enclosing a moor called Caladh Leacainn.

#landscape #wintersun #cowal #caladh #argyll #scotland #uk #wall

Photo of twisty roots on the underside of a wind-thrown root plate.

Spruce root plate.

#tree #picea #roots #argyll #scotland #uk

photo of frosty, back-lit tussocks of grass

Heavy frost, and bright sun, near the top of Beinn Bhreac (454m)

#frost #tussock #wintersun #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Photo of an old fencepost, with rusty barbed wire and a some lichens growing on it.

Grizzled and cracked #FencepostOfTheWeek

photo of some irregularly cup-shaped Cladonias with bright red, blobby apothecia budding round the rims.

One of the pixy cup lichens brightening up an old, grey stone wall.

#lichen #cladonia #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

photo of some twisty tree branches with a few yellow leaves catching the westering sun

Nice oaks in some afternoon, November sun.

#oak #intothewoods #wintersun #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Photo of some little slime mould sporangia (<1mm) looking like fluffy, white cartoon trees.

Found a little grove of slime mould sporangia coming up on cow dung & took a bit home to watch them develop. I think these might be Didymium squamulosum.

#myxomycetes #didymium #slimemould #slimemold #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

photo of a hazel branch with an orange, fingery fungus growing on it

photo of some hazel glove fungi with their upper layer chewed off, perhaps by some kind of arbroreal rodent.

Revisiting the place where I found hazel gloves last year. They are back. :-)
Slugs and rodents seem to like them, too.

#fungi #mushrooms #hypocreopsis #hazelgloves #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Photo of an old fencepost covered in moss and lichen, with central core rotted away.

A cavernous crater at dusk #FencepostOfTheWeek

photo of a cluster of small, reddish mushrooms growing through a patch of moss

A fresh clutch of burgundydrop bonnets, Mycena haematopus.

#fungi #mushrooms #mycena #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

photo of a dark, round object covered in rosettes of stiff, white hairs

Mystery object from the woods. This one turned out to be an old mushroom with a tiny, white fungus growing all over it. Tilachlidium, perhaps.

#fungi #mushrooms #tilachlidium #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

photo of some woodland; yellowing leaves in with low, hazy sunlight.

Autumnal oaks in Glendaruel.

#naturephotography #autumn #intothewoods #argyll #scotland #uk

They look very splendid, but I don't know what the functional significance of the hairs and water droplets might be. I'm not even sure whether the water comes from the substrate and is being sweated out through hairs, or if it is condensing out of the atmosphere onto them.

Photo of a cluster of very small, white mushrooms; growing on an oak branch. They are covered in tiny drops of water

Microscopic image of the surface of a mushroom with squiggly hairs on it. Stained red to make them easier to see.

These tiny, white mushrooms are very good at trapping water drops with fuzzy hairs that are corkscrew-shaped under a microscope.

#hemimycena #fungi #mushrooms #naturephotography #dewdropbonnet #argyll #scotland #uk

Here's a micrograph of Scytinium lichenoides photobiont given a similar treatment by me. It's described as having Nostoc in short chains. Most other people depict photobionts in thin sections, while I've been cutting open a thallus and letting the contents spill out. I presume I'm doing it wrong...

close up photo of a well hydrated, translucent, green, frilly lichen.

Another jelly lichen from the back garden; a big, lush colony of Scytinium gelatinosum growing on my door step, where the gutter drips onto concrete.

Scytinium gelatinosum grows well on damp concrete and mortar, but I do see it out in the wild on coastal rocks, too.

#scytinium #jellylichen

Here's some cells that spilled out of the cut end of a branch of the cyanomorph:

Photo of a bowel motion on a gravel track, perhaps from a fox. It mostly consists of crushed beetle parts with an iridescent, metallic sheen.

Now that's some sparkly shit.

#geotrupidae #dorbeetle #faeces #poo #naturephotography #argyll #scotland #uk

Ricasolia virens - Cyanomorph, Chloromorph and Photosymbiodeme Some lichenised fungi are capable of associating with both cyanobacteria and algae as photosynthetic partners. In some cases the appearance ...

Wrote a blog post about Ricasolia virens, which has somehow managed to be two of my favourite lichens.

wild-e-eep.blogspot.com/2025/10/rica...