Finally the weather is getting sensible and so the peak mushroom season can get under way.
Parasol heaven today...
Plenty for the pot and plenty left in the field to produce the next generations.
Haven't listened to it myself yet, but for anyone who is interested:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fwww6q
The previous weeks one on Bees vs Wasps was brilliant btw!
Some lovely looking, and tasting, Horse Mushrooms (Agaricus arvensis) in the bag today.
Love the colours of the gills showing the age of each mushroom.
Did you crush one in the end?
The more I look at that pic the more I'm thinking they're in the Honey fungus family... Armilleria, rather than milk caps (Lactarius family).
Possibly not the answer you want to hear but I'll refer you to this:
There are more than 15,000 species of fungi in the UK.
To put that into perspective, there are 59 species of butterfly, 101 mammals, 619 birds, 2,500 moths, and more than 4,000 beetles.
With so many fungi species to choose...
Here we go. One of the oldish Lepiota I just mentioned from the other day. See how the cap is curling upwards yet it still looked fresher than a Parasol or Shaggy Parasol would if it's cap was curling upwards.
Funnily enough I found a little cluster of oldish Lepiota in the field just before the field with The Prince in. They were under an oak tree and of a size and growing habit that had me wondering on their exact id.
On the same walk I had a lovely long chat with a fairly elderly lady who was...
Honey fungus. Check out all the black bootlace like rhizomorphs on the dead wood above them. Classic id help, and why some people call them bootlace fungus.
That's a Lepiota of some sort. Parasol family.
The Prince is an Agaricus, same family as field mushrooms. I'm 99% sure it was The Prince but I didn't pick it as was near the beginning of a longish walk, primarily on a photography mission.
You can't really go wrong with Parasols and Shaggy Parasols. They look like nothing else really, due to their size. Some small ones in that family (Lepiota) are edibility unknown and one is poisonous, possibly deadly, but they are much much smaller than the Parasol and Shaggy Parasol.
Edit: I...
Pic 1 and 3 I think are Sulphur Tufts. Pic 1 being older specimens than pic 3.
Pic 4 old Honey Fungus (especially is there's a tree stump under those leaves).
Pic 5 possibly Pluteolus aleuriatus :shrug:
Always best to try to get pics from all angles if possible for id purposes.
All my above...
UK Poetry Day today.
UK Fungus day on Saturday.
With the absence of any Poetry thread on here, I'm going to go for it and unleash a little something I wrote recently. Apologies in advance. :lol:
Some Boletus
Can be bombastic
All tubes and bulbous bases
Bruising bright and lurid.
Sparassis...
Also known as Poison Pie.
You only have to run your thumbnail across the cap in fact to see it stain Yellow.
As mentioned earlier. The Prince is my favourite of the Agaricus family.