Wolves Wild

Yet another inkcap species: pleated inkcaps. Delicate-looking and tiny, they can be quite hard to spot in short grass, and they don’t form the tight clusters of some inkcap species.

Until recently they were called little Japanese umbrellas in field guides. I’m all in favour of changing ordinary names of species when these names are racist or sexist. But I struggle to see what derogatory meaning was hidden in the old name. Nor am I  much taken with its replacement. Many inkcap species have caps which appear pleated.

Heron resting high on a weeping willow on the island in West Park lake. Look carefully, and you may be able to spot the heron in the picture of the liquidambar in a post yesterday.

Another inkcap species, this time some glistening inkcaps. The glistening comes on some newly emerged ones, which are covered in white flecks – the remains of veils which protected them as they were forcing their way up through the soil.

These had all been around for some time, and had begun to deliquesce. The grouping together in tight clusters is normal.

Like the yellow stainers in one of the posts yesterday, shaggy inkcaps are quite common, and big enough to spot easily. So, one again, these pictures include specimens from several different locations.

The inkcap group of mushrooms don’t have gills or pores on the underside of their caps to release spores from. Instead they deliquesce – the rim of the cap turns to a mush of spores which disperse as it dries. The process carries on, gradually shrinking the cap. The mushrooms in these pictures are at different stages of that process.

The mush before its spores go is a dark, dense black. That released from a closely related species, the glistening inkcap, has supposedly been used in printing.

Liquidambar tree near the edge of the lake in West Park, with leaves which are just starting to change colour for autumn. As I took a shot to include the tree’s reflection in the lake, I also included a heron perched on a weeping willow on the island.

A mouse spider on a door. I can’t work out why it gets to be called a mouse spider. In close-up its body looks furry, but so do lots of other spiders (and lots of insects). It’s a lot smaller than a mouse. These pictures were taken on a mobile phone, and make it look a lot bigger than it actually was. They also make it look a bit scary. It didn’t, at least to me, in actuality.

Yellow staining agarics are quite common: these pictures are from several different locations which I passed while strolling around Wolverhampton in the first half of the month. They could easily be confused with common field mushrooms, the wild form of ordinary supermarket mushrooms.

But these aren’t good to eat, guaranteeing an upset stomach. The giveaway is the yellow staining – a discolouration of the damaged flesh when the mushrooms are bruised or broken.

Growing from a thin layer of moss on the top of a stone wall, a single tiny mushroom. It’s not the first time there’s been one there around this time of year.

Autumn is spider season, or at least the time of year when a lot of species become more visible, both around the home and outdoors. or many spider species, autumn is the mating season.

I don’t know if this little spider is one of those. It was busy rushing round its web, which was on the bridge carrying the Castlecroft road across the Railway Walk. As it moved, it cast a sharp-edged shadow in the bright sunlight.

Colourful fly agarics in the shelter of a beech hedge at Bantock Park. Underground, they are intertwined with the roots of one of the silver birches which are a few yards away.