Category: David

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.

Another mushroom growing in lawn style conditions.

The most soothing spot in the city centre – if you ignore the noise of the traffic going round the ring road.

Another of these mushrooms growing right by the ring road near to Chapel Ash roundabout.

The bush this was on is growing just inside Chillington wharf.

I spotted this in early December, but thought it might be a good picture to reflect the hangovers many people will have today.

I presume the balloons had been used in some celebration in or outside the flats which are just visible beyond the old warehouse in the picture above.

That picture has (obviously) been subjected to more elaborate processing than is usual with those posted to this blog.

“When gorse is out of blossom, kissing’s out of fashion” – in the Wikipedia wording of the old saw. This gorse was flowering earlier this month next to Chillington wharf (yesterday’s post).

Yet another small mushroom growing through moss.

By the Birmingham canal near where it runs under Bilston Road. Formerly a lively point of trans-shipment of goods between rail and canal, this site is now owned by the German railway (DB), who don’t seem to be making any use of it.

Inkcaps are a group of fungi species which spread their spores by means of the caps disintegrating into a black gungy mess. These pictures illustrate successive stages of this process in one common inkcap species.

A series of views of several individuals of this cracking bolete – there are various different species, so I’m not sure precisely what kind these were.

They were growing on a high grassy bank by Wolverhampton ring road, just round the corner from some of the catkins in the previous post.