Westray Coast 50 – Day One
My adventures on the first of five days walking the entire coast of Westray.
One minute it’s there…
There’s a fungus at the bottom of the garden: I’d love to identify it but it’s all on its own and I …
Indian Pipe
I’m walking through a forest in Virginia. The trees here are magnificent. They are so much taller than I’m used to. In …
Cobalt Crust in Primley Park
Primley Park in South Devon is a large area, but it is just a part of what were the private gardens of …
The Tail of the Turkey
Turkey Tail fungus, Trametes versicolor, is everywhere: Here it is in Fungorum qui in Bavaria et Palatinatu circa Ratisbonam nascuntur icones, nativis …
What a difference a lens makes
Forty years ago I kept detailed nature notebooks. I wrote down everything I saw and identified with enthusiasm, including the smallest of …
Finding the Fluted Bird’s Nest fungus
There’s a fungus I’ve never see before at my feet in the woods of Orley Common in South Devon. It’s tiny, almost …
Dry rot’s wild cousin
I’ve owned a house which had dry rot. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone. Having the fungus, Serpula lacrymans, creeping through …
King Alfred’s burnt his cakes
There’s a seriously weird fungus growing on this fallen tree trunk. It looks the shape of bubbles, as if it’s been forced …
Searching for an unusual Easter egg
Easter Sunday was spent with my Hungarian friends going on a fungus hunt. As you do. Or should that be, as I …
Scarlet Elf Cups in Holden Clough
A large part of my childhood was spent walking many miles to a small steeply wooded valley, known in the north as …
2017 highlights of a wilder Devon life
2017 was when I embarked upon my quest with gusto. Which quest? To find all the animals, plants and fungi I wrote …
Oyster-of-the-Woods
Winter is still a productive season for wild food if you know where to look. Out on Dartmoor, along the River Teign …
Velvet shank
Would you expect the Japanese workers who grow Enokitake mushrooms to have lower rates of cancer deaths than the general population? That’s …
There’s a steak growing on a tree
There’s what looks like a raw steak growing out of a tree in the woods on Dartmoor: It’s Beefsteak Fungus, Fistulina hepatica. …
Pink Ballerinas cavorting in the grass
If there are pink ballerinas on your lawn they could be one of only two things: 1. Actual ballerinas, dressed in pink; …
Crimson Waxcaps
Waxcaps live in unimproved grassland. That means they are often only found in graveyards as the rest of the grassland environment has …
The sort of Plums and Custard you can’t eat
Looking back in my photo archive of curious and wonderful fungi I find photographs of Tricholomopsis rutilans, Plums and Custard: According to …
A mushroom to crow about
Walking along the River I spot an interesting mushroom. It’s a Magpie Ink Cap.
Violet Webcap
There are only a few fungi which are bright purple and this is one of them, the Violet Webcap, Cortinarius violaceus: It’s …
Mushroom clouds
There are Clouded Agarics, Clitocybe nebularis, all over this wooded slope at the National Trust’s Killerton House. They are chunky mushrooms, with …
A Charcoal Burner in the woods
There’s a purple mushroom on the forest floor. No, not purple, lilac. No, not lilac, it’s blue; and it’s pink in the …
What’s in a name?
Here’s the most wonderful fungus growing on a decaying slime mould growing on a piece of tree bark smaller than my finger …
Orange Peel Fungus
I’ve been going through some of my archive of photographs and delighting in some of the finds I made many years ago. …
Stinkhorns
Stinkhorns are fascinating fungi. You can normally smell them before you see them. It’s the putrid smell of rotting flesh or something …
Killerton and the Meadow Waxcaps
Killerton House is a National Trust property near Exeter in Devon. I’ve visited quite a few times and seen some wonderful fungi …
Chapeau Rouge
There’s a mushroom with a bright red cap in the woods. It’s such an unearthly red and the stem and the gills …
Yellowleg Bonnet
We find a delicate mushroom on our fungus foray. That’s a relief, because this mushroom season has been very poor, with the …
The Tree: An afternoon on Dartmoor and a wild idea
Dartmoor is a wonderful upland area of Devon. It is based on granite rocks which frequently outcrop on high tors. I’m having …
Going over the top; walking the coast of Westray
Westray is full of Neolithic, Iron Age and Bronze Age middens; rubbish dumps full of wonderful finds. If you live on a …