Wolves Wild

Grey spotted amanitas in Sutton Park a month ago.

The mushrooms seemed to be growing everywhere there was short grass in wooded areas.

Liquid ambers are trees originating in the Americas, imported as ornamentals. This one is in the garden of Wightwick Manor.

It was beginning to turn into autumnal colours when the Manor was opened to free entry on the Heritage Open Day earlier this month.

Bullrush flower on the edge of Wetland Lake. Flower on the same plant a couple of weeks earlier pictured here.

Fly agaric just beginning to push above the ground; same place as those featured in the previous post.

I went for a second look early on the morning after the other pictures were taken.

The full-grown mushrooms which had been growing in the soil by the flower bed had been kicked over. It can’t have helped that their bright colours make them hard to miss.

The two which were growing half-hidden by the vegetation did not appear to have been disturbed, and this one was now more visible and more photogenic.

UPDATE: Friday 27th September, lunchtime. I’ve just been across the park again, and the flower bed has been emptied and dug over in readiness for its next contents. The fly agarics, which were hiding under the leaves of the old flowers, are gone too.

I’m not surprised that whoever did it, in a workforce decimated by council cuts, didn’t notice the fungi, and I’m hopeful that the underground structures remain to produce fresh fruiting bodies in the future.

UPDATE 2: Saturday 5th October. Another visit to the park, and a new fly agaric has indeed come up in that flower bed. Also a fresh patch of fly agarics nearby. Will post pictures of these once they have been developed.

A visit to West Park about an hour before closing time on Wednesday revealed a variety of recent fungi.

The highlight was a group of fly agarics.

They were growing in a flower bed near to the Southgate.

Two were only half-visible under the foliage.

Two were clearly visible in the open soil at the edge of the flower bed. Another one nearby was just peeping through the soil. It features in the next post.

One had been well nibbled, possibly by squirrels.

Sulfur tuft mushrooms can appear any time from now and through the coldest months of the winter.

These were on the edge of the lawn at Wightwick Manor.

Fruit of a so-called strawberry tree. The plant is more of a bush. The fruit looks a little like a strawberry from a distance, and is supposedly edible.

Reminder of a summer which now seems to have been a long time ago: a gatekeeper butterfly feeding on one of the thistles in Barley Field.

Reed growing by the canal at Compton, drenched from overnight rain, as the seeds were beginning to develop.

One of the fruiting bodies of the lumpy bracket in the previous post had been growing on the birch stump long enough that it was supporting its own flora – greenish algae.