Nature's composters

I was down in the woods again early this morning to see how the dead men's fingers are coming along. Whilst there I across this eerily white and slimy toadstool. It is the fruiting body of Oudemansiella mucida, commonly known as the porcelain fungus in recognition of its white translucency.

The porcelain fungus lives on beech trees and makes its living by breaking down dead and dying wood. What it is that breaks down dead and dying porcelain mushrooms I know not. And then there is the problem of what breaks down the dead things that break down porcelain mushrooms, and so on and so on.

It all reminds me of the verse penned by The Victorian mathematician Augustus De Morgan:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.