Spotted Toughshanks
There are fungi I don’t recognise in the woods. They look as if they’ve been given a little too much bicarbonate of soda and put in too hot an oven:
![Rhodocollybia maculata - Spotted Toughshank - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Mystery-fungus-The-Hall-of-Einar-1346-725x544.jpg)
They also have very distinctive ridged stems:
They’re so distinctive I’m sure I’ll be able to identify them easily when I get home.
![Rhodocollybia maculata - Spotted Toughshank - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Mystery-Fungus-The-Hall-of-Einar-1345-725x483.jpg)
No such luck. I’m struggling, looking through numerous books, and finding nothing like them. Eventually I have to ask for help, like a man finally having to consult the instructions after admitting failure to work a new electronic device.
They are Spotted Toughshank, Rhodocollybia maculata. Here they are from James Sowerby’s Coloured figures of English fungi or mushrooms from 1797:
Mine weren’t as spotted. That was a toughshank.