Shaggy inkcaps forcing their way through the tarmac of a pavement. The black mark is a product of their deliquescence – the caps turn to mush from the rim inwards, which is this group of mushrooms method for dispersing their spores.
Fungi growing on wood chip mulch in Bantock Park. They’ve been heavily nibbled so it’s hard to be sure what they were, but probably common inkcaps – just possibly some rarer inkcap species.
Honey fungus clustering around the stump of a tree in a front garden. Previously, the fungus will have rotted the tree so that it needed to be felled.
The largest known living organism on earth is a honey fungus, though not of this particular species. It has spread through the entire extent of a forest in the state of Oregon, USA.
Growing under trees in a quiet residential street, these mushrooms are red cracking boletes. They, like all boletes, have pores rather than gills on the underside of their caps.
A recently emerged conical brittlestem, growing on the same patch of wood chip mulch as the ones featured in yesterday’s post. The contrast in colours might almost be between two different species (they aren’t).
Growing next to the brittlestem, there’s a pleated inkcap. These tiny and delicate mushrooms are often found growing on lawns or sports fields, where they can be hard to spot hidden among grass mown short.
Conical brittlestems are mushrooms of late summer and early autumn. Their standard food source is buried wood debris, but they seem to find wood chip mulch even richer.
When they first emerge, the caps are a rich tan colour, but as they fade to the paler shade seen in these specimens.