Kenfig Burrows
I've been amazed at the good weather over the last week. Autumn leaves with a touch of summer. Whist the weather has been beautiful it's really not great for fungi. At Kenfig Burrows the ground was very parched and we didn't find a great deal. We've had more productive forays here but today was not to be a repeat.
It was disappointing but not entirely in vain. We found two mushrooms that as of yet are unidentifiable.One of which is pictured below, the other may be
Calvatia excipuliformis.
Margam Park
By noon we had already decided to try somewhere else and ended up in Margam. For quite a while there was virtually nothing but we did find a few things,
Tricholomas I think, but we'll see. Towards the end of the day, in the last half hour, we found five fungi.
Three of the fungi were sharing the space and benefits of living on a huge fallen beech tree; All these fungi live on Beech. They were
:
Oudemanisella mucida/Porcelain Mushroom
Hypoxylon fragiforme/Beech Woodwart
Trametes veriscolor/Turkeytail
Below
, Hypoxylon fragiforme/Beech Woodwart. The second photo is the fungi in it's younger form. it turns dark as it ages. The photo below shows the age process. If you look closely at the surface of the fruitbody one can see it has a pimpled surface and that helps with identification. (click on the photo to enlarge)
Oudemanisella mucida/Porcelain Mushroom. A very beautiful mushroom, always with beech. I've seen some very large specimens but not in these numbers.
Below is another fungi that favours beech,
Pholiota squarrosa/Shaggy Scalycap. It grows at the base of the trunk. It's quite attractive and the shaggy scales all over the cap and scales makes identification very easy.
Whist photographing the fungi a couple approach us. They point out to us a stag, close by silently watching us..
Walking Home
I find this on the way home, living on an old trunk, slice a bit off, will look it up later because right now I have a hill to walk up and good coffee waiting for me.