This is a brief one. While looking off my back deck, I spotted some color down in the woods that just didn't seem to fit with the normal palette of greens and browns. Sure, there are some colorful little flowers tucked back there in the shade, but this looked like something large. And orange. A large orange thing.
So I wandered down to the creek for a closer look, and here's what I found.
I confess to not being a expert on fungi, but these guys seem pretty impressive -- like coming across a little slice of coral reef hiding among the hardwoods. To give you an idea of scale, there's an iPhone in the second photo.
So does anyone have an idea of a genus and species for my visitor? Please tell me these are giant truffles worth a zillion dollars an ounce. I've always wanted to be a mushroom magnate.