‘Tis the season for Shaggy Scalycaps

It’s 47 years today since I first saw Shaggy Scalycaps and wrote about them in blue biro with a pencil sketch in my childhood nature notebooks. And here I am, still doing it, although this time with an online blog and digital photographs taken with a smartphone.

Here’s the last time I blogged about them:

Shaggy Scalycaps, gout and squirrels

A lot has changed in the last 47 years. Technology has advanced to science fiction stages, since I now have the equivalent of a Star Trek Communicator in my pocket. Childhood has changed to limit the experiences of many children to indoor rather than outdoor activities. And nature? Half of nature has been destroyed and the rest is well underway.

Here are the Shaggy Scalycaps, taken with my mobile phone, a device which I occasionally use as a phone:

In 1882 it was in Mordecai Cubitt Cooke’s: Illustrations of British Fungi:

Gorgeous, isn’t it?

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

One was already broken off, so I had to capture that one, too.