Fungal News

Yes, I know, 'Fungal News' is hardly going to have the dedicated and excited following that 'Small Bird News' has but fungi have the great advantage, for me, that they stay still while they have their portraits taken.

Walking through the cold, grey woods this morning there was hardly a fungus in sight except for....

....these blackened bracket fungi growing - or dead - on the trunk of a very ancient and rotten oak tree and....

....this fungus which we first found almost a month ago which seems to be thriving. I like it not only for its spectacular colour but also because I think I've identified it, something which is rather rare when there are 15,000 different species in Britain. Hopefully, it's yellow brain fungus, Tremella mesenterica.

The other day we were walking across the public open space next to our house when we spotted these small fungi. I have no idea what the neighbours thought as I kneeled beside them to take a picture, but I was thrilled to be able to identify them (maybe) as star pinkgill mushrooms.

That I'm managing to identify at least some fungi is partly down to this app on my phone, recommended by a good friend which, while being limited in the number of fungi it has, at least offers a simple way to identify them. I was so thrilled with it that I even spent a princely sum of £3.99 buying the full version.

I am also finding an increasing number of good fungal sites on the web, one of which enabled me to identify this (rather chewed) cup fungus, of which we've only seen four, all in the woodland by Littleferry. I'm even fairly certain I'm right with this one: it's Otidea onotica, the lemon-peel cup.

With some I am only able to get into the rough area of their identification. For example, these delicate little fungi are bonnets, possibly the clustered bonnet Mycena inclinata.

However, of all the fungi we've stumbled across recently, this one gave us some moments of huge excitement. It's tiny, no more that 10mm across, and more startlingly red than appears on the picture, and it was all by itself in the middle of a grassy path cutting across the links by Golspie caravan site. After taking several portraits, and hoping it was sufficiently unique to be named after me, I tried prodding it, and it fell over. It's a bit of rubber.