Tuesday 10 September 2013

Excuses

My enjoyment of fungi gets greater though I get no better at identification. There are several reasons. First I like the fact that some things remain a mystery, and nothing is quite as mysterious as fungi. Secondly many of the fungi have only hard-to-remember Latin names. And thirdly I like to leave the specimens where I've found them: serious mycologists and amateurs know you have to remove a sample and take it back to inspect the gills or spores; some even use chemical analysis for tricky specimens.


This bolete has an orange cap as if it's an Orange Birch Bolete but there's no birch tree nearby - only sycamore. It's cap is also sticky.


Are these small examples of the same thing?



This one has a beautiful brown cap and loves to live alongside bracken.

One mushroom that's very useful to be able to identify is Honey Fungus.


It's got its tentacles (properly mycellum) into this tree and little doubts that its days are numbered. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, and all that. No matter unless the bird table is attached to it.... Which it is.



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