A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words 1083 entries

bird’s nest fungus

BURDZ NEST FUNG-gus
A group of tiny fungi that fruit as cups a few millimeters across, each holding several flattened discs that look exactly like eggs in a nest. They grow on wood chips, mulch, and dung. The cups are splash cups: a raindrop landing squarely inside ejects the eggs (technically, peridioles) out and away, sometimes more than a meter, which for the organism’s size is an extraordinary throw.
Etymology
An English name arrived at independently by anybody who has ever crouched down and looked. The Latin says the same thing: the family is Nidulariaceae, from Latin nidus, nest, by way of nidulari, to build a nest — the same root that gives nidification and, at some distance, nest itself.
flora forest Latin
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