Fungi Foray

On Saturday my mum and I joined the FSO , which is the Fungi Survey Oxfordshire group, lead by Dr Judy Webb. We met in our local wood with the aim of gathering as many species of fungi as we could.

The last few weeks weather has been dry, but luckily over the past week it has rained enough for the ground to be damp.

It became very quickly obvious that there are thousands and thousands of different species of fungi and remembering their names, and what they look like was going to be impossible for a beginner like me.

There were a lot of people on the walk, with around 1 expert to every 5 of us. Soon they were surrounded by people bring them fungi to identify.

Most fungi are actually really small and in one patch of deadwood near a stream we found loads of different types of tiny mushrooms.

Here are some photos of just a few different species. I'm not sure I'm going to remember all the names, let alone the Latin ones.

Sycamore Tar Spot

Brittlegill Russula, with a stem like blackboard chalk.

King Alfred's cakes

Along the walk, we also learnt about spore prints, how the mushroom on the surface is only a tiny part of the fungi, how some fungi grow off wood, some off the ground and some off other fungi.

There were lots of interesting names such as fairy bonnet, wood wolley foot fungi, dead men's fingers and milk cap fungi, all ones we found on our walk.

Mycena

Turkeytail

Earthball

Spores from an Earthball

Chicken of the wood

Deadmen's fingers

Puffballs

Honey fungus

Each of us came away with a handful of leaflets and packet of 'Grow your own Oyster mushrooms on a paperback book'.