Friday fungi

The rain today could mean only one thing ... another trip to the woods to look for fungi, and of course there were plenty of huge slugs out munching on them!

I love the way fungi pop up overnight and you never know what you might find. There are so many different shapes, colours and sizes that I'm finding fungi identification just as tricky as trying to name all those little brown moths! I've been looking at extra things like the shape and texture of the cap, how the gills are arranged and attached and features of the stipe (stem) - it's still very tricky though, so I've done my best (but I'm not very confident that many of them are right!)

Most common fungi I saw today were rosy bonnets, red cracked bolettes and saffrondrop bonnets, which had popped up throughout the woods.

Rosy bonnets

Red cracking bolete - brown cap with pink flesh, yellow pores
and a yellow and red stem

Newly emerging red cracking bolette

A large bolete (it has pores instead of gills) but I'm not sure what sort it was
as the red colouring of the red cracking bolete seemed to be missing

Saffrondrop bonnets - some of my favourites

Some of the other fungi that I could definitely identify...

Common inkcaps - the caps will quite literally drip away like ink

Common puffball - covered in little warts that brush off as they get older

Sulphur tufts - bright yellow fungi that grow in clumps 

Some of the fungi that I've had a go at identifying (with varying degrees of confidence) ...

Brown rollrim - a large brown fungus with a rolled under cap edge

Brown rollrim - Brown, crowded gills that attach down the stem

Common funnel - Shades of yellow with a funnel shaped cap and wavy edges

Clouded funnel - cream coloured, crowded gills. Stem similar range of colours
as the cap

Ochre brittlegill - Yellow cap and a white stem

Pale oyster - similar to the larger oyster mushroom but with a thinner,
undulating cap. These were covered in tiny flies that were buzzing around
them and settling occassionally

Tuberous polypore - thin, fan shaped, overlapping caps



Tuberous polypore - Pores instead of gills

Tuberous polypore



There were a couple of fungi that I couldn't even guess at!

A clump of brown, slimy, overlapping sombreros

White with a very bumpy scaly stem and white gills

The cap was white with a light brown centre