The Shroom Room

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...

Another day, another nature reserve. I found Forest Farm & Glamorgan Canal Nature Reserve  completely by chance, as I saw it on the map when working out how to get somewhere else. As I had a couple of hours to spare, I thought I'd take a little stroll to see what was there, and I was awestruck with how beautiful it is. It's a really big reserve, so I didn't get very far, but what I managed to see was breathtaking. There's a canal path that you can walk along, a public footpath that goes through a wooded area, or open fields. Along the wooded path there are the sounds of lots of different birds and the smell of wild garlic. And, to my delight, lots of species of fungi. As I came across a rotting stump, there was no way I could have missed the clumps of Sulphur Tuft , or Hypholoma fasciculare. Aptly named, they are sulphur yellow in colour and grow in tufts on dead wood, pretty much all year round. They have a very distinctive mushroom smell, and their gills ...

Glistening inkcaps are my favourite winter mushrooms. When it seems cold, dark and wet every day, a glistening inkcap poking out of a log is sure to cheer you up. They are light and shimmery, like something magical. Even though I have so many pictures of them, I always stop to take more whenever I see them, because they truly brighten my day. A cluster on a log Members of the Coprinus family - also known as Inkcaps - are quite different from other species, because most of them "auto-digest". This means that towards the end of their life, their caps roll upwards, turning into an inky-black liquid, hence the name.  Inkcaps were the first family I was able to identify quickly, as they are rather unique and therefore difficult to confuse with other genera. It is possible, however, to confuse mushrooms within the genus, so as always it's best to go about identifying with an open mind and above all, caution. The gills are turning black, indicating the auto-...