A walk through Walker Wood looking for fungi. Lots of guessing of IDs but I think I am somewhere near. I didn’t check the undersides of every small brackets but I did see that some had fine pores and others were smooth.
The header image is Dead Moll’s Fingers fungus. These are very similar to Dead Man’s Fingers but have a narrowing of the stem.
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Mainly Brackets
Quite a few of the fungi found were bracket fungi:
- Blushing Bracket, Daedaleopsis confragosa
- False Turkeytail, Stereum hirsutum
- Turkeytail, Trametes versicolor
- Birch Polypore, Fomitopsis betulina
- Yellowing Curtain Crust, Stereum subtomentosum
Others were:
- an Oysterling species quite possibly the Variable Oysterling, Crepidotus variabilis
- A jelly fungus Crystal Brain, Exidia nucleata, though I didn’t cut into it to look for crystals. I have never done that and I don’t know how big the crystals are so I might have needed my magnifying glass that was back at the car. It could be White Brain Fungus, Exidia thuretiana
- Black Rhizomorphs. I believe black Rhizomorphs like these are indicative of Honey Fungus variety of mushrooms – Armillaria
- Coral Spot fungus, Nectria cinnabarina
- Dead Moll’s Fingers, Xylaria longipes, as opposed to Dead Man’s Fingers, Xylaria polymorpha
- I didn’t examine the hairs on the underside of the bright red elfcup so it could be Scarlet Elfcup, Sarcoscypha austriaca or Ruby Elfcup, Sarcoscypha coccinea. See the next chapter for a bit more about finding it.
- Jelly Ear Fungus, Auricularia auricula-judae
- and the last one – Warlock’s Butter, Exidia nigricans
Spoons, Poo & Feathers
In many places in Walker Wood the leaf litter is quite deep and tucked under some leaves I spotted a promising pink dome. What fungus could this be I wondered. Nothing appears to have nibbled at it. After taking some of the leaves off I realised why it was not being eaten. No stem, no pores or gills, just a slightly brighter underside where the weather hadn’t faded the plastic as much.
Soon after seeing this spoon I spotted two small, bright red patches, smaller than a £1 coin. The red was so vivid compared to the potential fungal spoon that I almost dismissed it as plastic but had a closer look. It turned out to be the Scarlet or Ruby Elfcup shown in the gallery above.
I have only once spotted a Roe Deer in Walker Wood but there is plenty of evidence of them with several areas with deer droppings.
It has been noticeable that I have seen more plucking posts on my recent walks than I normally see. I guess this could be because of the wet weather tending to stick the feathers down so they don’t get disbursed as quickly by the wind.
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The images are published under the Creative Commons, BY-NC-SA license. Feel free to share them, edit them, but please keep my name in the credits. And if I have got the ID of anything wrong please let me know, I don’t consider myself an expert but I have write something. It is often a best guess and it would take up too much room to say It could be this, or it could be… or perhaps.
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