A Feast of Fungi

While the rest of the country is enjoying frost and snow we're suffering under grey skies and a stiff northeasterly which is bringing heavy showers. One of the advantages of Golspie is that there is a fair choice of walks so today's was into the relative shelter of the Dunrobin forestry.

Having fungi to search for at this time of year has been a welcome new interest, but recently they've become increasingly difficult to find. However, this pile of rotting logs beside Dunrobin Castle's walled garden came up with masses. 

The logs have been here so long that one has a sapling growing out of it. Each seems to host a single fungus, this one, which I have failed to identify, resembling....

....stacked potato crisps.

At one point the crisps had grown up a small branch of the log, the uppermost forming a flower.

Another log had a similar fungus except....

....it was less toasted and rather more rubbery. Yet another log....

....boasted this rather pretty fungus, the only one I have managed to identify. It's purple jellydisc, Ascocoryne sarcoides, I think.

Up in the woodland at the back of the walled garden I found this fungus, its cap being a slightly unusual shape. Again, I haven't yet identified it.

So a walk which, in prospect, might have been damp and slightly boring became a pleasure.