Autumn Fungi

Had we had a little more rain at the right times I think this might have been a vintage autumn for fungi. There are certainly plenty around but many, unlike this neat little group of what I think are common puffballs, have suffered, including being attacked....

....by an army of slugs. That there are any slugs around in the dry weather is a surprise.

These beasts seem to like starting their meal by nibbling the fungal fruit round the edges and then....

....moving on to the choicer parts in the middle. So it's been a frustrating time trying to find undamaged specimens to record but a few, such as....

....this saffron milkcap (maybe), have either avoided the slugs or are unpalatable.

Yellow does seem to be the 'in' colour at the moment in the woods around us. This is, I think, a chanterelle, one of several growing in much the same place as we found them last year.

Some are completely new to me. I love this one, as it looks like a Danish pastry with a custard filling, so much so that....

....I include another view of it. It must have grown very quickly as I'm sure the slugs would otherwise have had it, so quickly that it has enveloped and incorporated various bits of grass and twig.

I thought I had a new species here, a new stinkhorn perhaps, but it's more likely to have been a blackening waxcap adapting itself to an environment which is regularly strimmed, a view supported by one or two others which....

....seemed to have avoided decapitation.

My greatest regret with fungi is that I am so poor at identifying them.