Friday 21 September 2018

Fabulous Fungi

It was forecast that this year's weather pattern, damp with a long hot dry summer, would produce a bumper crop of fungi and how right they were.  I have never seen as many fruiting at the same time and they lined faint paths that run through Angerton Moss, a peatland habitat.
One that is always easy to recognise, Fly Agaric, but these were the biggest I've ever seen they must have measured 8 inches across and looking them up in the fungus guide it says they can grow from 6-20cm so these
must be at their maximum size.
Here is one in decay looking like a mound of couscous,  a small and shiny new one can be seen peeping though under the grass on the left
There were hundreds of these, Collybia cirrhata, which grow out of dead black fungi. They varied in size from little specks to these and also varied in
numbers growing together. Other fungi grew among the grass but I could not identify them
apart from being intrigued by their curious shape, small
and large.
Some looked familiar, this possibly is a species of mycena.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of these crab apples in the water just because they could be like my blog name - a raft of apples (although the title is taken from a poem)
Apples, like the fungi, are having a good year in 2018 although crab apples and the fungi I have photographed are not recommended for eating.   In praise of the crab apple I did once make a rather tasty white wine from them but its tastiness faded with age. Not a wine for laying down in ones imaginary cellar.

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