Wolves Wild

A comma butterfly, one of the autumn generation, resting in the sun on a bramble leaf. It was warming up before heading off to feed on the ivy flowers nearby,

A groups of boletes, possibly suede boletes, growing in short grass under trees by the side of Clark Road.

A horse chestnut in West Park. I didn’t get up close enough to see if the leaf colour had changed for autumn, or whether it was the blight which nowadays turns these leaves brown in late summer.

What attracted me was less the tree, than its contrast with the strips worn by the teams playing football. Even before I got to that part of the park, the match was making its presence felt. There were a few spectators, and I’ve never come across a more enthusiastic group at a weekend football in the park match before.

The blusher is another mushroom species which seems to be popping up all over the place this autumn. Their size, shape and warty caps immediately mark them as an allied species to fly agarics. They don’t have such a distinctive colour, but their size still makes them quite easy to spot.

These are from several different locations: lawns in front gardens, by roadsides, Bantock Park.

At the back of Tettenhall church, a steep ramp and steps lead to the streets behind the Upper Green. At the top of the steps, a block of flats has a large lawn, at perhaps waist level, with some mature trees. Some autumns, this lawn supports various kinds of mushrooms.

This is a birch bolete, sometimes called brown birch boletes. It’s one of those fungi which is only found in association with one type of tree: birch in this case, of course.

More pictures of a selection of the Japanese acers in West Park as their leaves turn permutations of red, yellow, orange and purple (!) for autumn. To see how much the colours can change in a week or so, earlier pictures of the first two trees in this set can be seen here.