There continue to be very few fungi in the woods at the moment though when we do find one it's often a welcome splash of colour in the otherwise drab winter palette. In some ways it's a relief not to find too many as I then spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to identify them.
This one was like a bright orange light in the dull Dunrobin woods, and was growing out of what was almost certainly a dead broom stem. Identifying it should have been fairly straightforward and there are, in any case, relatively few January fungi: it's a gill, and its gills are orange; it's cap is orange and the stem black; and the fruiting bodies form a very distinctive grouping up the branch.
Despite this, it took over a quarter of an hour to find it. The catch was the stem. In most internet pictures of velvet shank - Flammulina velutipes - the stem is orange but in just a few it had a black stem. I think the black stem is rather smart.
No comments:
Post a Comment