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 🙂

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…..