Wolves Wild

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.

Like the blushers in the post a couple of days ago, these were growing on the lawn of a front garden – indeed just a minute or two’s walk away. Although these looked fairly recently emerged, several had already been well nibbled.

Orange peel fungi are cup fungi, fairly common in autumn. From a distance, they do look very like discarded orange peel. Usually found ringing round a tree or tree stump, but this time they were growing in a surprisingly long row under the fence by the drive to Bantock House and Park.

The blusher is a fairly common later mushroom of late summer and autumn, here growing in the grass of a front lawn. The ring hanging down on the stems, and the flecks on those caps where they haven’t been washed away by heavy rain, are remnants of a veil which acts as a protective cover when the mushroom is breaking through the soil.