'Smooth, shiny, wavy, rich chestnut brown..' Bay polypore

It might sound something like the promise of a shampoo, but that description doesn't do the Bay Polypore justice. It really is a very attractive fungus.  It is indeed used in pot pourri or flower-arranging.   

The fungus looks like a rich tan leather, the colour deepening in the centre, and it is thin, and hard to the touch.  Its edges are wavy and it can grown up to 30 cm across.

The fungus is attached to its substrate by a short dark stem, which is continuous with the cap, and not separate.

This is two specimens intertwined. Underneath looks creamy white, and without a magnifying glass, you cannot see the gills and it looks smooth.

These fungi grow on fallen beech, and where you find one, you will find many.

These polypores were found in Jubilee Woods, in Leicestershire, UK.

'Prickly Wolf's Fart' Fungus; Lycoperdon echinatum or Spiny Puffball

Walking through a bracken maze on the hills above Ullswater, I was relieved to spy a stream and the promise of a way out.  The bracken thinned as I approached, and gave way to long grass underneath my feet.  Something metallic looking in the grass caught my eye.  It looked foreign in the environment, and my first thought, when I clocked it's rounded, slightly flattened shape, was that it was a child's purse that had been dropped.  Closer inspection revealed that the coppery-coloured mass was not rigid but soft and easily dented, and the projections that I had taken to be jewels were, infact, spines.  When I pressed it, it let out a jet of darkly coloured spores from the underside.  I knew what it was; a puffball.

I did not immediately recognise it as a spiny puffball, because as you can see from the photo, most of the spines are missing!  However, this is something that happens with age, and this puffball was certainly mature enough to puff.

The genus Lycoperdon means 'Wolf's fart', but I can't attest to it's smell, or that of a wolf's to be fair!  Echinatum means prickly in Latin.  Maybe it does resemble a sea-urchin when it is younger and covered in spines.  It tends to grow in alkaline conditions and beech woods, and is a rare find in the UK!

Dragonfly nymph skin (Exuvia)

To be honest, the motivation for putting in a pond during the first week of lockdown was to attract these stunning creatures to the garden.  Whose spirits would fail to lift at the sight of a metallic blue damselfly or a magnificent emerald green dragonfly? And I haven't been disappointed. 

I soon was visited by a couple of red-bodied damselflies.  (Damselflies are the thin-bodied ones).  One of them kept coming back to the pond. She really seemed to like the Arrowhead plant Sagittaria. Eventually I was able to video her ovipositing.  This is when she dips her abdomen in the water to deposit her eggs.

Damselfly and dragonfly start life in the water and grow through a large number of nymph stages. Depending on the species, and also environmental factors such as the temperature, they can stay up to four years in the water! Imagine my surprise when I was clearing out the blanket weed and came across this:

 It's difficult to know what stage it's at, but already you can see those dragonfly eyes, and it's quite a predator! I put it back in the water to develop further.

I made sure my pond was planted with some reeds because the final stage nymphs climb out of the water and up the reeds, before they undergo their final metamorphosis into the flying form. 

Well, I might have to wait a while before they emerge from my pond, but today when I was visiting my mother-in-law, I took the opportunity to check on some reeds that were in a community garden.

I found a nymph skin on one of the reeds. It was empty;  it could have been long gone as they remain for quite a while.  It is still amazing to look at the skin in detail and just imagine the miraculous reorganisation of the tissue that goes on inside there!

Can't wait to catch a dragonfly emerging from my own pond!

Fungi as part of climax community in psammosere

It's always interesting to visit a new habitat and see completely different species.  Last weekend I went to Anglesey and found a number of fungi that I don't usually come across.  They were part of the climax community of the dune system, or psammosere.

Deadly Fibre cap Inocybe erubescens

Pestle puffball or long-stemmed puffball

Handkea excipuliformis

Purple brittlegill 

Russula atropirpurea

Common Puffball

Lycoperdon

Inocybe rimosa

Another type of fibrecap. Rimosa is Latin for cracked.

Devil's Urn, Otherwise known as Urnula craterium

Clearly, back in the day when fungi were named, their wierd and wonderful forms were attributed to magic, or the work of the devil!
This was a good find. Had to go a bit off-piste in Burleigh Woods.  But what a reward tramping through the brambles. This is a monster fungus.  About 10 cm across and a really deep cup.  It's brown and a bit scraggy on the outside. On the inside, which is spore producing, it's black and smooth.

Not the prettiest, but pretty dramatic. And another fabulous Latinised descriptive name!!

Fairy Toadstool Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric

The Fly Agaric needs little introduction.  It is the toadstool that graces all books about fairies!
It's not so common in real life, and I only ever find them singly. It is widespread and found mostly in birch woodlands .

How do you like your beefsteak (fungus)?

I was sent a picture of a pink fungus.  It looked a bit amorphous, no obvious stem or cap.  Apparently it was growing on an old oak in Bradgate Park.

This was an important clue in it's identification. I looked up the scientific name, Fistulina hepatica.  Hepatica means liver.  Young fungi look more like liver before maturing into the instantly recognisable beefsteak.
To check my theory out, I went up to Jubilee woods where I knew there was a tree with beefsteak fungi. Sure enough, it didn't disappoint. It is amazing how very much like a beefsteak they look. These ones were a bit old, however, and had lost their pink raw meat colour. One had even fallen on the floor.

But further down the same fallen tree, I found the evidence I was looking for: a small, pink amorphous blob of the hepatica type.  So this confirmed the ID of my friend's initial find.