Giant polypores usually grow as several separate clumps of fungal fruiting bodies, looking like bracket fungi but appearing to sprout directly from the soil. Almost invariably, the clumps are a few feet from a tree stump: they’re springing from the roots.
The scene looks rural and peaceful. When I took it, I was standing on the bridge which carries the busy Wolverhampton – Wednesfield road across the canal, with the Bentley Bridge shops directly behind me.
Scalycaps growing from tree stumps. Two different stumps, and there may be two different species of scalycap. One set were definitely shaggy scalycaps. The others may also have been, or were perhaps golden scalycaps.
Mushrooms with yellow stems and caps which become browner towards the centre, growing in clusters on the stumps of dead trees, sulfur tufts.
There’s a chance of spotting them not just in autumn, but through the winter. They’re a species which can survive being frozen solid then thawed out again.
A sweetgum by the lake in West Park, with autumn leaves in vivid shades of red and yellow. Since the picture was taken, most of the leaves have been brought down.
Apparently there are dozens of fungi species with first recorded presence in Britain being of them growing on wood chip mulch. Redlead roundheads are one such mushroom. They were first noticed sometime back in the 1950s or 1960s, and have now spread pretty much everywhere. They’re spreading across western Europe and north America too.
Originally from Australia, and now beginning to be seen in woodland leaf litter: but the only ones I’ve ever seen are on wood chip. Quite common from late summer to late autumn in parks – these were in Bantock Park