The Shroom Room

As the sun has been shining a lot recently, I've been making an effort to enjoy it. After a busy week, I chose today to do some more exploring around our new neighbourhood. There's a nature trail nearby, so I had a walk through there, keeping my eye out for mushrooms as always. I wasn't expecting much, as it's been really dry recently. The Turf Mottlegills which I found last week had already disappeared. But when I walked off the main path into a more wooded area, I caught sight of a cluster of Fairy Inkcaps , or Coprinellus disseminatus. While most Inkcaps  auto-digest into a black liquid, Fairy Inkcaps don't do this. They do, however, darken with age, and their caps expand outwards as they mature. For this reason, two Fairy Inkcaps growing next to each other could look completely different! They tend to grow in clusters, sometimes hundreds in numbers, on or beside dead wood. The cluster I found today were on the bottom of an upturned tree. It...

First of all, apologies for the lack of posts these past couple of months. Things have been quite hectic, and I've been really busy. In the last two months, I've handed in my dissertation, completed two exams, moved house and started an internship. Needless to say, there's hasn't been much time for mushroom hunting, not that there were many about in April and May anyway. Regardless, I have finally got a few days to relax, so I thought I'd go for a wander around my new neighbourhood this morning. What I discovered were loads of mushrooms scattered in the grass around me. Excited, I picked one and took it home to make a spore print. It's likely that they sprung up due to the huge amounts of rain we've been having here in Wales. They were wet, so their caps looked shiny. Unfortunately, I have managed to misplace my mushroom identification books during the move, so had to use the internet to try and discover what these little brown mushrooms were. Luckil...

I love how so many fungi are named - some are inventive, some are hilarious, and others take more of a say-what-you-see approach. I like to think that today's fungal focus takes the latter approach. Whoever named this fungus the Jelly Ear really did just describe what they saw in front of them, and the Latin name is a bit of a mouthful. I have tried many times to pronounce Auricularia auricula-judae , but I'm sure it still doesn't sound right. They really do look like ears made of jelly, and, being a year-round fungus, you can pretty much guarantee you'll come across a group of them at some point. Unlike a lot of fungi, whose fruitbodies appear for a couple of days before degrading, jelly ears persist for a while. They change state depending on the weather, feeling velvety when dry but slippery and jelly-like when wet. For this reason, they're apparently great when used for stock, although I've yet to try this. Characteristics Habitat:  On wo...

Bracket fungi are the most difficult to identify for me. I find they all look rather similar and I'm aiming to work on this in the future. There is one bracket, however, that I never fail to identify - the Turkeytail , or Trametes versicolor . These are probably one of - if not the - most common bracket fungi. I have found them everywhere: on stumps in front gardens, logs in woodland and wooden posts in town. If there is wood, there is probably Turkeytail. It has been disputed whether there are multiple species under the name 'Turkeytail', or whether they simply come in an array of colours. I read somewhere that 'true' Turkeytails are slightly hairy to the touch, whereas 'fake' Turkeytails are smooth, however elsewhere I have also read that the texture of Turkeytails depends on their age. Therefore, I'm going to leave the species debate to the mycologists and continue with the assumption that all colours come under the 'Turkeytail' brack...