A mushroom to crow about

Fingle Bridge is a 17th Century stone arch packhorse bridge over the River Teign in Devon.

Walking along the River there I spot an interesting mushroom. It’s a Magpie Ink Cap, Coprinopsis picacea:

Here it is in James Sowerby’s Coloured Figures of English Mushrooms or Fungi from 1797:

It’s a mushroom which grows and turns to liquid in barely a day. I suspect that it’s a little more common than people think just because it’s difficult to be in the right place at the right time to see it. It’s a handsome mushroom.

If I’d gone back later in the day it would have opened out considerably.

The first scientific description of it was in 1785 by Jean Baptiste Francois Pierre Bulliard. Its name picaceus is from Pica pica, the scientific name for the Magpie:

Then there’s time to climb up the Hunters’ Path to see the views across the Teign gorge:

Before gorging myself in the Fingle Bridge Inn.