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.
Parasols are the largest British mushroom. When they’re mature, the flattened caps can be up to ten inches across. These are the closely related shaggy parasols. Slightly smaller, maxxing out at eight inches or so. Both species are quite common most autumns.
A death cap, (probably) the most poisonous of all mushrooms, just emerging from underground. Despite the absence of warts or a veil, it’s from the same genus of fungi as fly agarics, the blusher or the panther.
Sandy stiltballs are an unusual mushroom in Britain. For a few years in the 2010s, I kept finding them growing in sandy soil under roadside hedgerows in Shropshire.
First it was by a quiet country lane near Wyken. For two or three years they were there. Then no more.
Soon after, we noticed a patch by the main Bridgnorth to Wolverhampton road, very near the Rudge Heath roundabout. Once again, there for two or three years and not subsequently.
Perhaps there are some still, somewhere lurking in the area.
The blusher, yet another member of the same group of mushrooms as the panther or fly agarics. A few traces of the warts can be seen on some of these caps, but most had been washed off by rain.
A panther cap mushroom growing on the mossy lawn in front of a block of flats by a main road into town. Despite the more subdued colour of the cap, the white flecks of “warts” mark the fungus as related to yesterday’s fly agaric. The so-called warts are actually the remnants of a veil, a protective surrounding for the caps of this group of mushrooms when they are growing, pushing through the ground with some force.
