Variety of fungi, UV, NIR, Thermal

[Foxfire]

A variety of fungi, just to see what happens. Don't know all the species, just collected a bunch of common ones. Have a look :)

Image 1

 

1) under UV light, 2) in visible, 
3) UV induced fluorescence through Kolari IR 665nm filter, 4) with UV-pass filter (Baader U, red channel only).  
Lihgtsources: UV-flashlight, incandescent bulb

 

It looks that UViVisF can be good for species identification, although haven't seen any such field guides.

 

 

Image 2

 

1) IR665 2) IR720
3) IR850 4) Thermal (palette: white hot)
Lightsource: incandescent bulb

 

Not much differences in near IR, they just get paler as the wavelength gets longer. Thermal image shows the known property that fungi are colder than their environment, due to being wet /evaporative cooling. Don't know, maybe there are also some mushrooms that produce heat? 

 

 

 

 

[colinbm]

They look fabulous Foxfire.
The UVIVF I would love to do these in many different UV A, B & C excitation wavelengths 

[Foxfire]

26 minutes ago, colinbm said:

They look fabulous Foxfire.
The UVIVF I would love to do these in many different UV A, B & C excitation wavelengths 

Thanks! Yea, i would like to see this. It seems that the more significant colorchanges, -contrasts are around UV and Vis wavelenghts. I wonder if there are some ecological-evolutionary reasons for that.

[Nate]

Great comparisons Foxfire

I'm surprised the variation in the UVIVF

[Foxfire]

3 hours ago, Nate said:

Great comparisons Foxfire

I'm surprised the variation in the UVIVF

Thanks, i like to do comparisions. The ones with yellow UVIVF stems are Cortinarius sanguineus - mushrooms used for making pink or red dye. Russula species are usually the brightest. Lactarius species seems to have bright gills, as well as some mushrooms from other genera. 

[Unscenerie]

5 hours ago, Foxfire said:

It looks that UViVisF can be good for species identification, although haven't seen any such field guides.

 

A lightbulb just clicked in my head - perhaps you could identify look-alikes through UViVisF.

Great shots.

[Foxfire]

16 minutes ago, Unscenerie said:

perhaps you could identify look-alikes through UViVisF

Exactly! There are for examp two very similar smaller brown mushrooms, one is edible (Kuehneromyces mutabilis), and the other one is deadly poisonous (Galerina marginata). Have to check it again, but if i'm correct these were quite different under UV light. But i would never prefer to pick shrooms that has a deadly look alikes, however well identified. 

[Andy Perrin]

Could you check for phosphorescence by shooting a photo AFTER turning OFF the UV light? That might be interesting with fungi...

 

[Foxfire]

@Andy Perrin That's an idea, but have to leave it for the next time, these ones went back under the trees. But i've seen it with some dead/dried plants, namely dried stems and leaves of some Silene sp, and with dried seedheads of Lunaria sp. With these plants the phosphorescence lasted about 3 seconds or so. So i suspect there might be a greater chance with mushrooms when these are dried, but can't tell...

 

Edit: i leave it just Lunaria sp (Silver Dollar Plant)

[Stefano]

If the phosphorescence is short-lived with time constants of tenths of a second it could be hard to photograph it. I don't know if this is possibile, but using a UV flash one could synchronise the camera and the flash with a slight delay and take a photo immediately after the flash fired.

[Foxfire]

@Stefano It has seemed that phosphorescent things need a little "charging time" also, but maybe a flash is quite powerful to do it in an instant... But it's a good idea.

 

Edit: Yea, but probably it can be done with just a regular flash also, if to just to manage to program it under a delay

[Doug A]

What a collection. Fascinating to see all the variations. Must have taken a lot of time to collect and photograph all this.

Thanks for sharing,

barondla 

[Foxfire]

@Doug A I think to collect them is rather fun, but to set everything up for photographing, and to do it, is a bit more troublesome. But the results are always interesting. Here i did not really aim for the best images, just for a kind of small overview, to find something to take a closer look later.

[Doug A]

The photography definitely takes time. I wouldn't know how to find so many samples. Neat idea to use the samples like "thumbnails". I'll remember to try this.

Thanks,

Doug A

[Andrea B.]

These are fascinating overviews. An excellent effort.

 

It is quite possible that fungus fluorescence and UV reflectivity would be useful additions to their visible ID characteristics. So many questions could be asked. Is UV reflectivity similar across the species within a genus? Or does it vary? Does a family show similar fluorescence across its genus-es? Does a genus show similar fluorescence across its species? And so on. Perhaps someone will start a Shroom Website with UV/IR and UVI photos. Over time, a nice database would accumulate. (I dream.......)

 

Also, have you made any spore prints? Do they fluoresce?

 

[A spore print is made by removing the stem and placing the mushroom head gills-down on either white or dark paper. Carefully lift the mushroom after 12-24 hours, and you will see the pattern of the spores released by the gills.

 

You probably want to make spore prints on a table in your garage or screened porch where you can make photographs and check the fluorescence without having to move the spore print because somebody needs to set the table for dinner.  I tend to think it might not be a good idea to breath in too many mushroom spores, so dispose of the spore prints carefully.]

[Foxfire]

On 9/22/2023 at 4:02 AM, Andrea B. said:

Also, have you made any spore prints? Do they fluoresce?

I left the fungi on the black piece of carpet i was using for these. Some released the spores on a carpet, but i did not investigate this further. Later i did a similar patch and let the shrooms to dry out, so i  checked for phosphorescence, as Andy Perrin suggested above, but the dried shrooms i had collected were not phosphorescent.  

 

Shroom Website with UV/IR and UVI photos would be nice, lot of work also if someone decides to do it :)