Shaggy Scalycap and The Lemondrop Kid

Great! Which one do you want to be?

Shut up!

Okay but you don’t get the ball till you tickle my tummy.

This is going to be a post about fungi and flowers.

Fizz and I went out with the intention of shooting some vines. I want to write about Clematis vitalba, Wild Clematis, Old Man’s Beard, Travellers Joy, you know the one.

I want pictures of the stems. They hang like vines in the trees and their sheer weight can bring a tree down. Old vines are as thick as your wrist. It is an important aspect of the species that nobody ever mentions and , you know me, I have got to show this if I am going to write about the plant. I need the pictures but no luck yet, I have not really found good examples and it is too dark.

The first picture of the Robin in my last post, the bird is sitting on just such a vine.

So I was looking and I found some mushrooms.

I don’t know this species. That is a good thing, I love to find things that I don’t know, that is the only way to learn.

I think that it looks like a Honey Fungus but if it is, it is one that I do not know.

I looked on the internet and all of the images that I saw suggested that this was Dark Honey Fungus but that is baloney, I know that species well.

I went out to collect samples and on the way back I met the local mushroom expert.

When I say expert, he is in his eighties and his knowledge comes from…… well he just makes it up. He told me that these were Parasol Mushrooms and that they were very good to eat. They are not.

I know the Parasol very well and it is nothing like this but I like the old fellow.

A few weeks ago he called me over and asked me if I could recognise a Chanterelle, I can but I was hesitant because I knew what was coming.

“You don’t sound very sure.” he said, “Come over here and I’ll show you.”

He has been eating these mushrooms for years and I am not sure what they are (not Chanterelles) but they haven’t killed him. These mushrooms had gills, Chanterelles don’t. He asked me to look out for them on my travels, “worth a fortune. Let me know where you find them.”

The thing that slightly alarmed me was that he told me that he had taken his wife to one of the best local restaurants and while he was there he had sold a small bag of his “Chanterelles” to the chef for twenty pounds.

I really like this man but his knowledge comes from a different place than mine.

Hardly any UK mushrooms are actually dangerous and anyway he has made it to eighty five.

Going back to my mushrooms, I had to seek expert help and I sent off these pictures asking if this was a Honey Fungus.

The answer that came back was, “No, it’s a Shaggy Scalycap but you can check this. The Honey fungi all have a white spore print,  Pholiota squarrosa has a cinnamon brown spore print.”

Well, this is how we learn things.

Muddy Paw Prints (spore prints)

I am only tickling you to keep you happy, I have got another ball.

More anyway!

The first results were not great but pretty soon they were leaving muddy paw prints all over the kitchen and Fizz was happy.

Shaggy Scalycap, Pholiota squarrosa.

The same mushrooms one week later.

It used to be classed as edible but it is now recognised as poisonous. Poisonings have only been recorded when this fungus is consumed with alcohol and then the symptoms occurred about ten hours later and included vomiting and diarrhoea (not a killer).

It is a saprobic fungus, feeding on dead wood but also an opportunistic parasite. It can only attack a live tree if another fungi  has weakened it first.

Now then, just recently Fizz has been exhibiting some unusual behaviour, possibly something to do with her celebrity status. When she gets hold of the ball she rolls over on her back and won’t give it back until she gets tickled.

She does this every time that we go out and it has become a feature of our walks. I don’t think that this is normal behaviour for a dog.

And The Lemondrop Kid, well I don’t know but this is definitely not The Scarlet Pimpernel…

Lysimachia nemorum, The Yellow Pimpernel

Like it’s cousin the Scarlet Pimpernel the Yellow Pimpernel belongs to the Primrose family but that is about all that they have in common.

The Yellow Pimpernel is a shade tolerant woodland plant. In fact the second part of it’s scientific name, nemorum, comes from the Latin word nemorus and means “of the woods.”

It has five stamens around a single style and it has five petals.

Note the pointed shape of the petals this helps to distinguish it from it’s close relative L. nummularia, Creeping Jenny whose yellow petals are much more rounded and also closer together.

The leaves are oval and pointed.

Yellow Pimpernel flowers from May until the end of August.

       

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Ericales

Family: Primulaceae

Genus: Lysimachia

Species: Lysimachia nemorum

Wildflowers in winter.

A Beautiful Orange Theme (Slime Alert!)

It is going to be orange because the next flower that I am going to write about is not called the Orange Pimpernel.

I do know some very pretty orange things, like the Small Copper butterfly…

and of course I know cute things…

Like, “Puppy with an Orange ball.”

Today I thought that we could do “Interesting Things” instead.

So to start us off, this is a Blushing Bracket fungus.

It is an attractive fungus and it is quite orange.

Daedaleopsis confragosa is a polypore fungus, that means that it doesn’t have gills on the underside, it has pores and this species has quite big pores.

The reason it is called a “Blushing” Bracket is because it is easy to make it blush.

To be sure of success I enlisted the help of an ex military man (22 years Airborne) for this short video, just the sort of fellow you need to make a bracket blush. (I didn’t have any sailors around.)

(and it worked)

That is the bracket, what I really wanted to show you was something that I found eating it.

I know that I said that I wouldn’t do cute but I just can’t help myself. This is absolutely my favourite slug. What’s yours?

It is not exactly orange but the pictures have an orange feel about them.

So what would you like to know about Limax maximus? I mean first, what would you like to know first? 🙂

It is a friend to gardeners. It doesn’t eat living plants but feeds on dead plants and fungi, it is also carnivorous.

Like it’s namesake the Leopard, it prowls the garden hunting down other slug species, that would damage your plants, and eating them. (Top speed, six inches per hour)

(Wikiwotsit lists it as being a major agricultural pest in the US but if you follow the notes you will see that they have got their species mixed up.)

Just to tell you a little bit about slug anatomy, the colourful, saddle like structure behind the head is called the mantle and that houses all of the vital organs. The rest of the slug is just one big locomotive muscle, what you might call a foot.

The slug has a breathing hole on the right side of it’s mantle called a pneumostome.

The organs coming out of it’s head are called tentacles, it has four of them which it can retract.

The top pair are it’s eyes and the bottom pair are for smelling.

Finally on anatomy, you have probably guessed that slugs are related to snails. They are both Gastropods, in fact a slug is just a snail without a shell but Limax maximus does have a small internal shell.

You can see it best in this next picture it is the small white lump at the back and base of it’s mantle.

I can’t show you it’s mouth parts they are concealed below it’s pretty face but at least you can see why I like it.

Leopard Slugs have a fantastic and unique sex life that I haven’t had a chance to photograph yet. David Attenborough did some great film for the BBC that doesn’t seem to be available any more but I am sure that if you were to search for “Slug sex videos” you would find some more information. (that is how I stumbled upon them)

So now, an orange wildflower.

Anagallis arvensis, The Scarlet Pimpernel.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a beautiful little wild flower of meadows and waste land,

But.. Your eyes do not deceive you, it is orange, it is not scarlet.

It should be noted that the English word “Orange” comes from the fruit of the same name and the fruit and colour were not known here until the sixteenth century.

So the Scarlet Pimpernel is a lovely little orange flower, with a purple centre and bright yellow anthers. There is also a naturally occurring blue variety but that is more common in Mediterranean countries and rare in the UK.

The flower has five stamens surrounding a single style.

The stamens are covered in small white and purple hairs. It is thought that these might serve to attract insects as the flower does not produce nectar.

The leaves grow in opposite pairs, they are oval with smooth edges.

The flower has several common names such as the Shepherd’s Weather-glass and Poor Man’s Barometer that relate to it’s weather forecasting abilities.

It closes at night and opens late in the morning but it will only open in full sun and as soon as it clouds over the flower closes again and forecasts rain.

       

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Ericales

Family: Primulaceae

Genus: Anagallis

Species: Anagallis arvensis

Wildflowers in winter.

Get off the log! (Again)

It was a beautiful day today.

It really was a day for shirtsleeves. It is hard to believe that it is nearly December.

What was really great was that this wonderful weather coincided with National “Take your Idiot to Work” Day.

I picked up the nearest idiot and off we went. We are going fungus shooting.

We are going back up to the Sweet Chestnut coppice because there was so much to see up there. In fact today I shot about six species but I am only going to show you one in this post because I am still working on identifying the others.

Today’s fungi is Sulphur Tuft, Hypholoma fasciculare and it is a pretty one. In fact I think that this one was invented by Walt Disney and appeared in several of his films before escaping from his studios and becoming the familiar woodland mushroom that we know today.

Here are some old photographs. The first from last February and the other two are from some years back.

That growing formation is very typical of this species. It is called Sulphur Tuft because it is sulphur in colour and it grows in tufts. The specimen that I found today was not typical in it’s growth habit, being very spread out but I have had my ID checked by the experts.

Get off the log!

So let us have a closer look at this beautiful fungi.

As always Fizz was a great help to me and I probably couldn’t have got any of these pictures without her 🙂

Look up! That’s November.

I have some other beautiful fungi and some shockingly bad behaviour still to show you but I must work on my ID’s first.

Corruption and Decay in Darkest England

Now with new improved Fizz.

By the time Fizz and I got out yesterday it was getting dark and there was no chance of getting any decent pictures. This morning it seemed a bit brighter and we decided to have another try.

This fog was to the South and on the hills. First we are heading North to Badger Alley, it is not so bad there.

Yesterday I found some more Oysterlings and I want a chance to photograph them.

I have heard Oysterlings described as the most photogenic of fungi and I didn’t think that when I found them growing on slimy green vegetation.

These look quite a bit nicer. These mushrooms have got legs, there are lots of little ones still to come so I shall be back to visit these again soon.

So that is the Oysterlings. Next….

Don’t eat yellow snow!

Remember our Pear-shaped Puffballs?

I told you that all Puffballs were edible but that you must cut them and make sure that they are pure white inside. I need to show you what I mean.

I am reluctant to take another one of these as I want to watch them mature and decay but this is an important stage in their development. So selecting the biggest one….

This one has started to yellow. You shouldn’t eat them like this.

Now this isn’t where we are going today. Fizz and I are going back up to the Sweet Chestnut Coppice to look at the Honey mushrooms that we saw about two weeks ago. The coppice is up there in the fog.

I have to keep Fizz off the road as much as possible so we are going through the fields. Here are your Fizz shots for today.

I am afraid that I have already got her messed up a bit and she is no longer “fresh back from the cleaners.”

Fizz in Fog.

Eventually we have to take to the road but we have by-passed the narrowest parts.

Once we get up here we are safe and can walk on the grass.

Here is the wood we have come to visit. You can just tell that the light in there is going to be perfect for photography.

This is what I have to put up with every day in England!

I quite like fog it is better than constant rain 🙂

So where did we leave that tree?

So here is our first fungi in the coppice. This is Hairy Curtain Crust, Stereum hirsutum. This grows all over the world and you will find it in Australia and North America. It is very common and we will see a lot more in the next couple of months.

Who is rocking the log!

What sort of an idiot are you? Just asking.

Get off the log.

Hairy Curtain Crust.

Notice that she was on a lead in those last pictures. I have just heard an animal moving about in the woods. We don’t get to see it. It was probably Deer, there are a lot of them around here but there are also Wild Boar and Boar would be dangerous for Fizz. (they might knock her off her log) She is safe so long as she stays close.

My next find is a stinker.

Phallus impudicus, this is a Stinkhorn Fungus and it is living up to it’s name. I don’t often find them with the gleba intact like this (Gleba is the disgusting bit), flies are usually quick to eat that bit but I guess in Winter there are not so many flies around. This specimen has been hanging about for a bit and is truly repulsive.

I want to have a closer look. I am a boy and I like disgusting things 🙂

I need to dig it up and see it’s egg.

Sadly it broke when I lifted it. The stem is very hard and brittle.

Inside the stem is sitting in the egg but does not seem to be attached to it in any way.

It just slides out.

The jelly like egg remains.

Up at the other end the stem didn’t seem to have any attachment to the cap either. The cap just slid off and slimed everywhere and it stank.

Interesting but that’s enough of that.

Let’s move on to the Pigskin Poison Puffball.

These are the decaying remains of the Common Earthball,  Scleroderma citrinum.

Quite a few of them had opened like cups and now contain a soup of poisonous spores and rainwater. (I need to photograph all aspects of a fungi’s development.)

Then finally we found our Honey Fungus. That too was decaying.

I was very interested to find that my Honey Fungus, Armillaria ostoyae was itself being attacked by another fungus. This is some kind of parasitic fungi. I don’t expect to be able to get an ID on it but I am trying to find out more as we speak.

One expert has already advised me to collect some in a tupperware container and see what develops. Hmm….. Not sure that I am ready for the responsibility of keeping another pet.

If I find out anything then I shall let you know.

Did I tell you that Winter cut really suits you? You look lovely.

(Ha ha! I remembered to read the back of my hand)

Come on. Let’s go home before the Boar get us 🙂

Oysterlings, Tremella and Puffballs (and a spore print)

Shhh! It’s early and we don’t want to wake the house up. There is a clear starry, starry sky and the promise of a  decent frost when morning comes.

Fizz and I have been finding good mushrooms over the last couple of days and there is time to show you some of them before the frost.

This is the first one that caught my eye.

They are growing on the stem of a Stinging Nettle and whilst it is common to find brackets on dead wood I don’t often find them growing on green plant material, Oysterlings do though. They can even form on dead leaves. They must have a very quick life cycle. There is no chance of keeping one of these as a pet as their home will rot and disappear very soon.

There are quite a few Oysterling species, they belong to the genus Crepidotus. Many of the species can only be identified under a microscope by looking at the shape of the spores. You might see this one identified elsewhere as a Variable Oysterling but without pictures of the spores that is just a guess, there are other common species that look identical. It is just an Oysterling.

I think that the plant matter that  this one is growing on is just a more decayed nettle stem.

That is Oysterlings, moving along the track, here is one that would make an excellent pet.

You know what that is, don’t you? Tremella mesenterica, that is our Yellow Brain Fungus. I was just captivated by the way that it is pushing out from under the bark. I think that the wood is Ash, given that it is a large branch under an Ash tree.

These next mushrooms are puffballs.

Yes, good Dog. Get out of the tree.

These are Stump Puffballs also called Pear-shaped Puffballs,  Lycoperdon pyriforme and the second part of that Latin name literally means Pear-shaped.

Puffballs are great because you can eat them and they are very good. There are no poisonous Puffballs, they are all good so it is a really good one for beginners.

What you do have to do is cut them open. Inside they should be pure creamy white. Once they start to yellow they are no good, don’t eat those.

Whenever people talk about eating puffballs they give the following warnings.

The Common Earthball (poisonous) can be mistaken for a Puffball.

You must cut your Puffball to ensure that it is white and so long as you do that you will never mistake an Earthball for a Puffball.

Also Immature Amanitas (Very poisonous) look a bit like Puffballs.

This picture isn’t brilliantly clear but, same thing, inside you will find stem and gills forming and not the smooth white texture of a puffball.

If you cut your Puffball and you must, then you can’t go wrong.

There were lots of other fungi out there but I don’t have time, morning is coming and yes it is a hard frost 🙂

Just quickly, “how to take a spore print.”

This is nothing to do with examining spores under a microscope, we can’t see the shape of them with naked eyes but very often the colour of the spores can be a good clue to identify a species.

I am not going to get this one to species. It is a nice mature Agaricus. It could be a Field Mushroom but it doesn’t quite fit the bill, it isn’t growing in a field and it smells of aniseed. That doesn’t matter to me, it will do well to illustrate my spore print.

So cut off the stem and lay the cap, gills down on a piece of paper (Card might have been better). A lot of people recommend using black paper because the spores are often light in colour, I know what to expect from this one so I have gone with white.

It is best to cover the cap with a bowl. It is going to drop spores anyway but that will stop them from being disturbed.

I left this overnight and I got a good heavy print that left me in no doubt to the spore colour.

Sometimes people want to take a print for artistic purposes and I thought that my heavy print had lost a lot of detail. You can fix the spores in place with a dusting of hairspray, just be careful not to blast them away with your spray.

So I did another one and I left this for just one hour. I could have done many more as heavy as I liked. You need a mature open mushroom to do this.

Now I have got to go and get the Dog cold. The UK is under (what we call) extreme weather conditions and the whole country will probably “grind to a halt” shortly. That is what we usually do when leaves fall off trees or it gets a bit chilly. It is a good “Coping Mechanism” and then we sit indoors and have toast 🙂

Jew’s Ear?

I don’t like that name  It is a corruption of Judas’s Ear and comes from the idea that Judas hanged himself from an Elder tree. It is very unlikely that Judas did choose an Elder, they don’t grow very tall and they just don’t have the right growth habit for suicide.

I don’t think that there is any mention of an Elder Tree in the New Testament (Scholars of the Bible feel free to correct me). The idea that an Elder was involved stems from fourteenth century English literature. A time when it was the practice to malign trees as well as people. It was the oppression of Paganism because Pagans worshipped trees.

Now I am not Anti-Semitic and I quite like Pagans and their trees, so I have two reasons for not liking the name Jew’s Ear.

It is hard to escape though because the Latin name is  Auricularia auricula-judae. From the Latin Auricula meaning “Ear,” It is an Ear Ear-Judas.

That Latin is in itself wrong because the rules of taxonomy (Binomial nomenclature) say that a species name can comprise of only two words but they have got around that by adding a hyphen. Some people still refer to this species as Auricularia auricula which is actually more correct and drops all of the oppressive connotations.

‘Ere ‘Ere!

Well it does look a bit like an ear.

Other common names for this fungus are Jelly Ear and Wood Ear. It is a Jelly Fungus and it does grow on wood, so they are both good names.

Imagine finding Ears…

….and brains, at the same time.

You would be looking around for Nose Fungus next. (My apologies to anyone who has actually got nose fungus)

So where does the Elder Tree come into this?

Well you will almost always find it growing on Elder. 90% of the time, it does grow on other wood like Sycamore, Beech and Spindle but nearly always you will find it on Elder.

It is saprobic, it mostly feeds on dead wood but occasionally parasitic too.

Technically it is edible but nobody eats it in the West. (it is a “wont’t kill you but is horrible” type). It has a history of  use in Herbal Medicine where it has long been used specifically to cure sore throats (Boil in milk and gargle with it).  I think that this is probably nonsense based on the idea that Judas would have had a sore throat when he hanged himself.

It is widely eaten in the East. There is a Chinese culture of serving medicines in food and a medicinal soup is made from this fungi to cure colds and fevers.

What else can I tell you?

When the fruit dies it looks like this.

That is my little Wood Ear.

Now a Pixie must be looking for these..

Dark Honey

At last I have found something really exciting.

I have dragged Fizz up to look  at some old Sweet Chestnut coppice and she isn’t over excited because we have to walk on the road and there isn’t any playing ball as we go.

It is okay once we reach the wood.

The floor is thick with the Sweet Chestnut leaves. These leaves contain toxins that inhibit the growth of other plants but some things do well here and we will have a look at them when we return tomorrow.

This is what I have found.

Armillaria ostoyae. It is the same Honey Fungus that used to grow in woodland that I owned some years ago.

I wrote a post about it recently About Honey Monsters using pictures that I had taken years ago. I am excited to have the opportunity to photograph it again and that is why we are going back for another look tomorrow.

When I saw it today I had a good idea what it was but I couldn’t get proper confirmation until I got home, it has been a few years since I found one of these. There are some key identification features that I still want to photograph and we could eat it.

I probably won’t eat it just because I like to see it on the tree but I will try a little bit just to see if I have a reaction and then I can eat it next time. You should always try a little bit first if you haven’t eaten a species before.

Here are some of the pictures that I took today.

It’s a tree. Somebody tell him it’s a tree, we’ve got things to play.

Sensing that my companion was  somewhat less enthusiastic about mushrooms than I was, I dragged her off to a field for some playtime.

We are at the top of he hills now and the fields are dry, close cropped and full of sunshine.

Happiness is round and yellow.

The Clouded Agaric

If I had found just one of these fungi on it’s own I would probably have passed it by. It would have seemed unexceptional and pretty indistinct to me.

What made it beautiful was the scale. These were big mushrooms.

So now we need to find out what it is. The pictures above are nice and they contain some important information but not enough for an ID.

The cap colour is indicative, the name “Clouded” comes from the grey/white colour of the cap which is always darker in the centre and the crinkled edges of the older fruits are also true to this species but many fungi have these characteristics. The other information that I am getting from these pictures is the way that they are growing together in quantity, that is also indicative of this species.

We want to find out what it is, so I am going to gather as much information as I can.

I need to look at the stem and the underside of the mushroom. Is there a ring on the stem? does it sit in a cup? Is it hairy or scaly? I need to know if this mushroom has gills, many of them don’t, they often have a flat porous underside and it is absolutely vital to record this. When I cut it I am looking at how the gills join to the stem and the colour of them.

The way that I approach this is to try and photograph everything that I can possibly think of.

Even with these pictures there is still a very good chance that I won’t be able to identify the species. There are other things that you can look at. Does the fungi have a noticeable odour.

Sometimes scent is quite faint and the best way to smell a mushroom is to put some in a bag.

Let the scent concentrate in the bag for a few minutes, then open it up and breathe it in deeply. (Scratch you screen now)

Wow! OW! That wasn’t really necessary. This mushroom has a very strong odour. I have heard this smell described as unpleasant but I didn’t think so. It had a strong mushroomy/earthy smell and my first thought was that I would like to eat it 🙂

Something else that you should look at is if it discolours when cut or bruised.

Here is an old video of a friend and I demonstrating a fungi called Blushing Bracket. “Blushing” because it bruises very easily.

Some fungi does, ours didn’t.

But it is just as important to know that it doesn’t discolour as it is to know that it does.

The other thing that you should take note of is where you found it. If it was growing on wood do you know what kind of wood? What trees are around and what other plants. Soil type might be important and if you know what plants are growing there that can say a lot about the soil. If you don’t know then photograph them.

The next thing that you can do is to take a spore print but up until now everything that I have done has been on location and has only taken me a few minutes. I didn’t need a spore print for this one so we will do that in another post.

This may all seem like a lot of trouble to go to but this is what I like. I go out looking for things that I don’t recognise and I identify them and learn about them. I was pretty determined to identify this mushroom.

If you do want to identify a fungus then please at least give us the cap, stem and gills if it has these things. It makes it so much easier.

So what did I get from all of this discovery?

The most interesting thing that I found out concerned it’s edibility. The common advice is to avoid it. It is not poisonous but it can have an adverse effect. It causes gastric upset in a lot of people and some people it doesn’t effect at all. Tummy upset? Not very serious 🙂

I quickly found two blogs where people described eating it, one of them said…

“My God, what a lovely flavour.”

and the other one said…

“Really really tasty strong flavour”

The trick is to try a little and then wait for twenty four hours. Find out if you are one of the lucky ones. There is a lot of it and it will regrow in the same spot. I think that if it is that good it is worth taking the test 🙂

Note: there are a few white gilled, pale capped fungi that are more poisonous than this one. Make sure that you know what you are playing with.

Is this Blue?

I don’t know. I can’t tell without a microscope. It is probably blue. It is beautiful and I am going to post it.

You have probably seen this a hundred times. Somebody will post a picture of a fungi…

Unidentified Toadstool.

Can anyone tell me what this is?

No of course they cant! I don’t do that I photograph specimens in great detail and when I still can’t get a positive ID I get very frustrated.

I know that you are frustrated too but you see, I am being paid to be mean to you.

Friends are just the stepping stones on the path to success.

I was ambitious once. I will get a bottle of whiskey for looking after her for five days and some things are more important than friendship 🙂

Before I even think about photographing a new mushroom there are certain criteria that must be met.

There must be something distinctive about it, something that makes it stand out from the rest. That will make it easier to identify and it also means that I will recognise it again when I see it.

The other thing is that I must have good specimens. There is no point at all in photographing a single, old, half decayed cap, that will tell you nothing. I want a fresh young fungus in good condition but even better than that is a group of them showing different stages of development.

The big plus for me is if it can also be beautiful (almost a necessity)

This group tick all of the boxes.

The pictures that you are about to see are not good enough/ do not contain enough information for a positive ID. Please keep that in mind when you are photographing new fungi for yourself. You have to give us a chance if you want to know what it is.

Okay  I am going to leave that little family group intact in case I want to come back and have another look. There is a little one on the outside of the picture that I am  going to look at closer.

Hello Baby 🙂

So it is Stropharia species. If you find a blue mushroom like this it is almost certainly a Stropharia. They are commonly called Roundheads.

These are probably Stropharia caerulea, Blue Roundheads, they are the most common species but without microscopic examination we can’t know for sure. It might not be blue, it could be Verdigris. (much rarer)

So it goes. They are beautiful and worth posting.

Now I am going to take Miss Grumpy out and try and put a smile on her face, even if that means feeding the sheep some popcorn 🙂

Oranges and Lemons

I am going out to look for oranges, Fizz is chasing the lemons. I am not certain that she is really interested in Fungi. Her primary interest in the natural world seems to lie in the ones that run away when you chase them. At least she has some interest in nature and doesn’t get too bored on these walks.

This is where we are going.

The dark line of trees on the horizon is a conifer plantation and I am hoping to find something there that we would’t find here.

The walk to the plantation is predictably pleasant. You can look at some pictures while Fizz and I do the legwork.

Beautiful Autumn colours.

Leg work.

Nearly there now….

Here we are, Forestry Commission land.Now I am not a big fan of these plantations but it is not the trees fault. The trees and the forest itself have an undeniable character and beauty. If this was Norway or Canada then I would love to see thousands of acres of Norway Spruce and Douglas Fir but this is the heart of England and they do not belong here.

The FC and I don’t exactly get on but it is nothing to worry about, I don’t like them but they couldn’t care less, so it is not like we are going to come to blows or anything. I just need to get this off my chest.

Gripe One: Back in the nineteen seventies there was a big public outcry about the FC cutting down our ancient woodland and planting conifers. They said that they were sorry and that they would change. At that time 58% of the Forest of Dean was conifer plantation, forty years later it stands at 50%. They have tried but they haven’t tried very hard.

Ancient woodland is a special and unique habitat and it is a dwindling resource. You can not make new “ancient” woodland. Once 98% of Britain was wooded and today it is about 2%.

These plantations are known as PAWS (plantations on ancient woodland sites). Today this woodland can still be converted back to ancient woodland, so in a world where you can not create new ancient woodland you can actually make a lot more. It has to be done now. The seed bank that exists in these woods is covered in pine needles and it is dying and scientists say that one more generation of growing and felling will kill the land. They are not going to give it back. Lost forever and that annoys me.

It is very dark in there and that will make photography more challenging.

As a former small woodland owner I have another little gripe that I could call number two. The FC are strongly opposed to “change of use” of our woodland. It is there for cutting down. If you try to get planning permission for a six by four wooden shed on your own woodland the FC will oppose it and you will be refused because conservation or amenity use represents “change of use.” If you want to clear fell a thousand acres of ancient woodland and plant a pine forest they will probably give you a grant, that is proper forestry. It is very easy to get felling licences.

Look a little animal has been nibbling at a fir cone.

It is a cone from a Douglas Fir and it shouldn’t even be here, nice one Squiz. 🙂

Gripe numero three is just that the FC patrol their woods shooting every animal that lives there. They say that wild life damages the forest and must be controlled and yet before people industrialised the whole country was forested and animals lived in it. Animals don’t harm forests (people do) animals interfere with us maximising our profits, that’s all.

So we don’t get along. It is not really their fault. The FC was formed just after the First World War. We had used so much timber in the trenches that the government feared we would run out. The FC was formed to ensure the nation’s supply of timber. They are the governments lumberjacks, that is their remit and they do exactly what they are supposed to do but they are not always completely honest about what they are doing when dealing with the public. They omit things and put a spin on other things.

Our ancient woodland should be looked after by conservationists and not the government’s lumberjacks.

End of rant. Totally finished.

We are here to look for oranges and here is the first one.

This is called a Yellow Stagshorn, Calocera viscosa it is saprobic on conifers.

This particular one was fairly well attached to the forest floor so I had to find another, it is just very dark in there.

I found some growing on a branch and brought it out into the light.

This is what they call a jelly fungus.

The name Calocera breaks down like this, Calo means “beautiful” and cera means “like wax.” It is very descriptive. The second part, viscosa just means “sticky” which it is a bit.It is sometimes confused with coral fungi but most of those grow in the ground and this one always grows on dead wood, (conifer wood).

“I have found a lemon.”

You are a lemon.

Our next orange is something different. The first shot is just to show you the location and habit, it was too dark to photograph there.

This is Tubifera ferruginosa and it is not a fungi.

This is a Slime Mould and Slime Moulds belong to Kingdom Amoebozoa and not Kingdom Fungi. I am a bit taken aback to find myself embracing a whole new kingdom and I must confess that I don’t know very much about these.

Never mind, this is exactly what we went looking for. I have to look at it closely.

Maybe if I looked at Forestry Commissioners this closely I would understand them better too. (sorry)

This mould has a common name. It has not passed unnoticed. It is just me that walks around with closed eyes.

This is called the Red Raspberry Slime. These can vary a lot in colour and some of them are very red and look just like Raspberries, mine is a bit orange.

I am not going to write a lot about Slime Moulds today because I don’t know a lot about them but I love it and I will find out.

Then we became tired and hungry and so we went home. We need to leave some things for another day.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..