Wolves Wild

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.

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.