There is a species called blue stain fungus that I've been familiar with for a while because it is found in pine trees here. It happens to be a favorite food source of the pinewood nematode, which causes a disease we know here as "pine wilt". Blue stain is unrelated, but pine trees that die rapidly and are found to have it are often assumed to have died of pine wilt. In any case, I recently got to thinking about this fungus and realized that while I have seen the blue stained sapwood in pine trees, I've never seen fruiting bodies associated with it. After some research I came to find out that the fruiting bodies are so small they are difficult to see (much less knit), but I did come across another type of stain fungi with some really remarkable fruiting structures... GREEN stain fungus. Unlike blue stain fungus, green stain is found on hardwoods. I'm pretty amazed by it! I'm planning to do a larger project with these, but here is a sneak peek for now. So vibrant. I love them!

These structures were knitted as part of my 52 Forms of Fungi project, through which I will knit a different type of fungi for every week of 2013. Check out more of the forms from this project.