The Shroom Room

We've been having beautiful weather here in Cardiff, and whilst it's been lovely to sit and eat lunch in the garden, it hasn't been the best conditions for mushrooms. So, when it rained for an entire day yesterday, I was excited at the prospect of finding more fungi. And as I ventured out with a friend today, fungi were exactly what I found. Dotted around on dead wood were lots of Common Jellyspot , or Dacrymyces stillatus. Yellow or orange in colour and shaped like round blobs, Common Jellyspot grows on dead wood throughout the year. As the name suggests, if you touch it, it has a jelly-like consistency. It is quite common for multiple blobs to fuse together to form bigger, more abstract shapes. Characteristics Habitat:  On dead wood, including fences Fruit body:  2-5mm across, yellow to orange in colour, in small blobs which often merge. Gelatinous to touch but harder when dry. Spore print:  White Season:  All year Edibility: Inedible Now ...

Fungi are such a diverse group of organisms that often it's difficult to believe what you're looking at is related to the mushrooms we use in the kitchen. I have stumbled across many a fungus that sparks this kind of reaction in me, one of which is King Alfred's Cakes , or Daldinia concentrica. They are extremely bizarre-looking, forming large black lumps on dead wood. Where there's one, there tends to be multiple. Their name is derived from the story of King Alfred, who allegedly hid in the house of a peasant woman whilst the Vikings were wreaking havoc. The woman asked Alfred to watch her cakes in the oven; however he was so distracted by his problems that he let them burn. And I suppose these fungi are what the cakes looked like in the end. Rather fitting, too, as they feel smooth, hard, and if you tap on them, they sound hollow inside. In fact, if you were to cut open one of these 'cakes', what you'd find inside is zones of shiny circles. Alth...