Wolves Wild

A blushing bracket fungus seen from below and above. The lower side is a mass of pores: the spores are dispersed from these, rather than from gills.

A cluster of honey fungus emerging from a fallen tree trunk, which had probably been brought down because the fungus had eaten away at its heart wood.

Brown birch boletes, fairly common, sturdy-looking mushrooms. They are invariably found in association with birch trees, though they may be widely spread, several yards from the tree trunks.

Growing on wood chip mulch, some bonnet mycenae.

Growing at the base of a tree, almost certainly from a root which it is eating away at, a blushing rosette – a polypore fungus. It was the first fresh fungus I’ve noticed this autumn.

Not all fungal fruiting bodies take the form of variations on the classic mushroom shape. From a distance, earthballs and puffballs can look like someone has been losing golf balls. On closer view, the two genuses can be distinguished by the presence or absence of a small hole at the apex. That is found on puffballs, where it forms a nozzle where the spores are released. There’s no hole on intact earthballs, like the ones pictured.