A selection of the fungi we've found in the middle part of the month serves, amongst other things, to illustrate the fun people have had in naming fungi. That their names are often so.... earthy.... reflects the importance fungi must have had in the diet of country people. Some are excellent to eat - if you know what you're eating - some are edible but only in pretty extreme circumstances, like when you're very hungry.
I was thrilled to find this fungus. For a start, it's very pretty, but its main attribute is its lovely and very appropriate name - plums and custard.
Superficially, this may look a bit similar but it, too, if you look closely, has an apt name - the woolly milkcap.
This fresh, vigorous and thrusting young fungus has a much less happy name: it's the blackening waxcap, so called because....
....its fresh beauty so quickly....
....wizens and darkens into a rather....
....black and sad old age.
Fungi come in just about every colour and shade. This is one of a large group, the brittlegills, whose name is self-explanatory but which also tend to get their other name from something pretty obvious, like their colour. This is the green brittlegill while....
....I need hardly tell you that this is the bloody brittlegill.
Like all the local fungi this autumn, the pores continue to be excelling themselves. This is the bovine bolete, also known as the jersey cow, while....
....this one is the peppery bolete, so named because, when cooked, it's reported to have a peppery taste.
Not everything is rosy in the fungus garden. A year ago we were finding scarlet waxcaps with the blackening waxcaps on the links at Littleferry. The year, so far, we haven't found one.
I do my best to identify the various fungi I find. Apologies for any mis-identifications.
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