Mid-August Fungi

We have never, ever seen so many fungi as were growing here in the middle of this month. They were bursting out all over the place, in varieties of colour, size, shape and, very likely, level of lethality. The ones in these pictures were found before August 24th: since then we've found a heap more.

I do like to identify them but, with the majority, all I can do is hazard a rather uneducated guess. The one in the picture above looks like one of the pores, perhaps a bolete, and it may be slippery jack, which is supposed to be good eating.

This one is the size of a golf ball and, at first, I had great difficulty in identifying it, but I'm now fairly sure it's a young fly agaric, of which there are....

....some real beauties in the woods, particularly in the conifer plantations.

This look like a brassy version of fly agaric but I don't think it is. It's either panthercap, Amanita pantherina, which is poisonous, or it's grey spotted amanita, Amanita excelsa, which is edible - which is why I would never trust myself to identify a fungus with the certainty that I would risk eating it.

This is the same fungus except fully developed, showing a white skirt but....

....this very similar one remains a mystery, except that it's possibly a bolete.

At first this one stumped me but I'm now fairly sure it's an uncommon version of the common puffball. It's the first fungus I've come across where the stem is wider than the cap.

This fungus demonstrated the group's ability to push up through even a very hard surface, in this case a gravel track compacted by the passage of mountain bikers. I'm willing to hazard a guess at this one: it may be oak milkcap, Lactarius quietus.

This one was in full bloom by the track that leads up Golspie Glen. Each fungus is large, about 4 - 6" across, and, again, I'm willing to have a go at its identification: branched oyster mushroom, Pleurotus cornucopiae.

The gate in the background here is the railway crossing at Dunrobin Castle station, one of those lovely 'halts' where you have to hold out your hand to stop a passing train. The fungus is a bracket, which may be the conifer-base polyphore, Heterobasidion annosum, or the southern bracket, Ganoderma australe. Maybe.... maybe....