Fungus Foray with Woodlandguy
I have been meaning to have my own fungus spotting trip in the woods for a couple of weeks now, so, finding the time of year good and the weather bright, I set out for the woods yesterday, Sunday 10th October. Now, it must be said that I am just learning about fungi after I finally found a book I have been looking for; a photo guide. In all the 10 years I have spent in the woods, I never felt the urge to learn about fungi. It was not that I was not interested in them, it was more because I hadn’t put my attention on them much because I always thought they would be so hard to learn.
I bought the book for £1.99 and was really pleased with the buy. It is a little book by Paul Sterry called mushrooms of Britain and Europe. Like all the modern nature books I buy now it has great photos, which are very important to me for identifying wildlife, but at times, I wish I had my other Paul Sterry book with me too - The Complete British Wildlife Photoguide. It is another great book, and has a section on fungi at the back. Although the pictures are taken by the same man, there are many that he has captured in a different light, and some that he has taken a more typical photographic impression of, therefore making identification easy in one book, but hard in the other. It can do no harm either to have two little pocket photo guides while out looking for fungi.
There were many other things I learnt about identifying fungi too. Some were very quick to be recognised in the book, but there were also a good few that took me a while to get, like the good ole Deceiver , which is known for just that, due to its varying appearance, colour and shape. One thing that helped me to learn about fungi and where to see certain specimens is noticing the fallen leaves or anything else in the background of the photos in the books. The leaves and moss, and grass and plants, and stumps and branches, hold the clues to the whereabouts of a particular fungus that the species seeker sets out to look for.
I found it invaluable at times when I was stumped, to ask myself...could this specimen be that fungi in this picture? That was the key question...could it be such and such on this page? By asking this question, my brain really started to work. I would then be looking to and fro at the picture, comparing the cap and colour, the gills, the shank, the dimensions and so on. For it is true, I learnt, that fungi appear very different from the time they are born, then in youth, and then in prime maturity and then as they fade in colour and die. I felt that the weather and the locality affects certain specimens as well, making them either a good or poor specimen of the same fungus.
As for the chosen area for my search, I picked a mixed deciduous and coniferous woodland, because it was clear when walking through these woods late last month, that there were so many types of fungi here. It makes sense, fungi are wherever there are trees, so the more different types of trees together, the more different types of fungi. So, for my first afternoon's serious fungus spotting I did very well, jotting down 29 different types, and they were the ones I could put a name to in the book. There were many others that I did not list, either because they were not included in the book, or I could not match their likeness to the photos.
So here is the list of fungi I identified in an afternoon.
1 Herald of Winter
2 Fly Agaric
3 Birch Polypore
4 Russula luteolacta
5 Blackish-Purple Russula
6 Common Earth-ball
7 Peppery Bolete
8 Boletus luridus
9 Tawny Funnel Cap
10 Amethyst Deceiver
11 Fuligo septa (a yellow slime mould)
12 Phaeolus schweinitzii
13 Gymnophilus penetrans
14 Boletus erythropus
15 Yellow Stag's-horn Fungus
16 Sulphur tuft
17 Stinkhorn
18 Common Puffball
20 Bachelor's Buttons
21 Coprinus plicatilis
22 Charcoal Burner
23 White Coral Fungus
24 The Deciever
25 Clavulinopsis luteoalba
26 Magpie Ink Cap
27 Hairy Stereum
28 Many-zoned Polypore
29 Rose Russula
Linear Mode
