Some observations on the travails of photographing the fruiting bodies of the 5th kingdom.
Habitat and timing
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| Mixed broadleaf woodland and deadwood - managed for habitat |
To illustrate the difficulty in finding fungi, a prime case of disappointment, was a visit made to a woodland classified as ancient semi natural, with an underlying geology ranging from limestone, mudstone and sandstone and a flora indicative of ancient woodland, with ancient coppice stools and veteran trees. I had high hopes for a rich, diverse assemblage of macrofungi, even allowing for my 'mushroom blindness', the reality was a fungi desert on that visit.
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| Mixed broadleaf woodland - managed for habitat |
Lessons learnt
- Some tree species have poor assemblages of fruiting fungi.
- Locations need to be repeatedly revisited.
- Fruiting fungi are apparently capricious in nature, some years are of plenty, other years not so good.
- For reasons that I have no idea about, some patches of a wood are hotspots for a number of different Fungi, whilst adjacent areas are barren.
- Walking speeds need to be modified to a very leisured pace to spot fungi.
Photogenic specimens
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| Remains of a Fungi feast |
Finding pristine fungus specimens is something of a lottery. Fungi appear to be a desirable food resource for a surprisingly diverse range of woodland wildlife and then there are fungi foragers and commercial pickers.
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| A slug grazing the base of a Stinkhorn |
Stinkhorns are particularly afflicted by slugs eating away the stem and causing them to droop.
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| Jelly Fungi ~ Leafy Brain Fungus and Brown Brain Fungus |
Mushrooms are more vivid after rain then during dry spells. Leafy Brain Fungus, is an unremarkable dark shrivelled colour when it dries out, whilst after rainfall, the colour changes to a vivid red wine colour.
Identification of the fungi species
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| A troop of Amethyst Deceivers |
For the casual observer some fungi are distinctive enough to leave no doubt as to what they are, sadly there are a great many other fungi that are more challenging to identify. It is up to an individual to draw their own line where curiosity descends into more committed investigation.
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| Tawny Grisette (Amanita fulva) |
Consider Amanita fungi, sufficiently large (macrofungi), to be visually conspicuous and as the family includes some lethally poisonous fungi, there are plenty of descriptions. The two Fungi guides I own, describe 29 and 19 species, the Dean Fungus Group have a record of 35 Amanita species and the British Mycological Society, more again. A useful website for identifying or confirming a species is www.ispotnature.org.
In a future post I'll describe a foray in an Ancient Caledonian Pinewood.
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| A solitary white fungus, in mature beech and oak woodland. I am fairly confident this is a Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa) due to the nature of the volva, stem texture, veil, gills and cap. |
