Fungi
I'll start with a series of found fungi on the University Site,
I'm no expert, but that isn't that much of a problem, that's what identification books are for, There are ident' book for just about everything, Birds, Beetles, Trees, Fungi, even Trains.
For the most part I have used a combination of Roger Phillips' 'Mushrooms'
and Michael Jordan's 'The Encyclopaedia of Fungi of Britain and Europe'.
Geastrum triplex or possibly G' rufescens, Star fungus 75mm across
It's quite difficult to ident' these unless you are an expert, as I said before I'm not. There were about twenty of these star fungi, in various states of maturity, some young ones still in their egg like form, through to the mature ones whose rays had turned brown curled completely beneath the spore sac and puffed out spores readily if the wind blew or any animal brushed past them.
Chlorociboria aeruginascens
Green wood cap, very small, the central clump is 55mm across and 20mm deep. The clump on the left is about 18mm across and 10mm deep
Meripilus giganteus
Giant polypore I think this of one of the biggest annual fungi in the UK
600mm across...
...but much bigger, in size and weight, is this perennial
Bracket fungus Ganoderma applanatum the Artist's pallet fungus
the biggest left-hand piece is 700- 800mm across. I covered this in my very first blog so I won't bore you with another explanation.
From the very large to the very, very small this may be Mycena ascendens which as far as I know has no common name, poor thing. Some of these were barely 1 mm across, the largest one was only 4 mm across and 7 mm tall, the smallest were only 1mm across and only 3mm tall. I could find very little written about this delicate and magical little fungi.
"Chicken o' the Woods" or "the Sulphur Polypore" are the common names and the latin is Laetiporus sulphureus. CoTW as foragers abbreviate it, is really good eating when young, this one was passed its best, and they get a little sour as they mature. I find it delicious to eat, but it doesn't agree with everyone's gut, including mine.
There is a huge amount of rubbish written about CotW, that some folk are allergic to it. It is true some people can get the squits after eating it, but that isn't an allergy. Just as some people can drink 5 pints of real ale no problem others gets a runny tummy, that too is not an allergic reaction, a true allergy is somewhat more of a serious thing and can kill you.
Part of the reason many people complain it upsets them is the size of this fungus, you can harvest a couple of kilos easily from a fair sized one, and many foragers consequently gorge on it, eat a kilo of French onions soup and that might give you the squits too. My advice is, if you do fry it in garlic and butter, don't gorge on it just because you have lots of it, and don't cut off more than you can eat.
Daldinia concentrica Cramp balls or King Alfred's cakes
Often seen on ash trees on dead bark (it's a saprophyte), when cracked open the inside is made of dark grey and black concentric rings much like tree rings, it is excellent tinder for fire lighting. Our hunter gatherer ancestors would have known this fungus very well, kept it dry in a hide bag and brought it out after a long rainy day to quickly get a fire started. The King Alfred's cakes name refers to the story of the king who burnt an old woman's cakes, the Cramp balls name is a bit gruesome and is said to refer to the swellings or 'Buboes' in a man's groin when dying from the bubonic plague, yuk.
Sulphur Tuft Hypholoma fasciculare easily identified by the bright yellow flesh when the cap and stem are split open, had I taken this photo a few weeks earlier the caps would have been bright yellow but these were near the end of their fruiting cycle and were about to go brown and decay into a soggy mush. This fungi is also saprophytic, meaning it lives of dead wood, it is not a parasite
Jordan, M (1995) Encyclopaedia of fungi of Britain and Europe. Newton abbot. David and Charles.
Phillips, R. (1988) Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe. London. Macmillan.
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