Category: David

These pictures were taken in Parkdale, off the Tettenhall Road, about an hour before an early December sunrise.

These bunches of mistletoe were growing on trees within the ring road in the centre of Coventry. The one above was on a tree between the university and the cathedrals.

These bunches were near the top end of Warwick Road. The Greyfriars spire can be seen in the background below.

Time for a reminder that the trees aren’t always bare. This is a woodland clearing in Sutton Park as it was last August.

A fairly common fungus species, and one of the more visible ones now the weather is getting hard, sulfur tufts form large clumps of yellow mushrooms. These were growing on the lawn outside the flats on Merridale Road.

A bracket fungus, a parasite and killer of many types of tree, it is shaped a little bit like the hoof of a horse. It is also called the Tinder fungus because it burns easily, and can be used to start a fire from a spark.  Ötzi the Iceman, whose five thousand year old remains were found in an Alpine glacier some years ago, was carrying four chunks of this fungus.

These specimens were growing on the trunk of a tree beside the Smestow Valley LNR railway walk, near the Alpine Way access point. The unnatural brightness of the greens of the moss and ivy leaves in the lower pictures is because I needed to use the on-camera flash to get enough light for the photos.

The remains of Dudley Castle and Dudley Priory seen on a late autumn day.