Day 13: Hiking in deciduous forest affords opportunities to find things you wouldn't see among conifers. I can't say what prompted me to stop at this particular point on the trail, but had I not done so I wouldn't have noticed teeny-tiny little orange spots on a piece of decaying wood. Moving in for a closer look, I discovered that they weren't closely attached to the substrate as I had initially thought. Each little disk was supported on a stalk (stipe). The largest cap was no more than 3 mm and a smaller branch to the side was freckled with even more in the 1 mm range. "Cute!" says I, thinking that they probably wouldn't be listed in any of my mushroom/fungus field guides, but they were: Bisporella citrina, commonly called "Yellow Discos." Discos? I thought it was a misprint, the "o" having slipped in with a fumble of fingers. I checked. No, it really is Discos. Alternately, they're called Yellow Fairy Cups. They can be found growing on decaying hardwood which has lost its bark.
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