Fungi

Žemaitija National Park is home to 501 species of fungi, 30 of which are protected and listed in the Lithuanian Red Data Book. Fungi grow everywhere, but the greatest variety of macromycetes, which are easier to spot with the naked eye, can be found in the forests of the National Park.  Here you will find edible and poisonous cap mushrooms, polypores or shelf fungi, and many other colourful and bizarrely shaped fungi fruiting bodies – conical, spherical, spongy, bowl-shaped, ear-shaped, and sheet-shaped. Some grow on the ground, others on various substrates, such as living or decaying wood.

The pride of the mushroom kingdom of the National Park is the Old man of the woods (Strobilomyces strobilaceus), considered to be a relic of the old-growth forests. In mixed stands, the protected species of scarletina bolete (Neoboletus luridiformis) and dusky bolete (Porphyrellus porphyrosporus) can be found. Scrobiculate milk cap (Lactarius scrobiculatus) and chocolate milky (Lactarius lignyotus) occur in moist spruce forests. In autumn, at the base of the trunk of many an old oak trees, the huge fruit-body of the hen-of-the-woods (Grifola fromdosa) can be found. Polypores such as the varnished conk (Ganoderma lucidum) and Pycnoporellus fulgens can be found on spruce stumps and trunks.

273 species of lichens have been found, of which 14 are protected. The Plokštinė Nature Reserve, Liepija Forest, river valleys, core forest habitats, the Platelių Manor Park and other places are notable for their diversity of lichen species. Protected species such as the tattered jellyskin lichen (Scytinium lichenoides), the bloody heart lichen (Mycoblastus sanguinarius), the peppered rock tripe (Umbilicaria deusta) and others are found. Here and there, the on the trunks of old oaks, the easily recognisable by its large, leathery leaf-like thallus Tree lungwort (Lobaria pulmonaria) can be found.