Autumn: Extract of Fungi

Brick Tuft Hypholoma sublateritium (I think!), growing from the edge of the oak board veg beds.

The appearance of fungi in the garden is always surprising. It is partly their otherworldliness, partly the speed with which they appear, and their unpredictability emergence in time and place. Their sudden fleshy presence makes you realise how little you know about what is going on under your feet, out of view: for they surely must have been here all along in their secret hyphaen form, creeping filamentous through the detritus… all summer? all year? for decades? Who knows?

The compost and manure added to the vegetable beds seems to encourage fungi. That said, they have also popped up in the lawn, in flower pots and in the greenhouse.

I took a nice specimen indoors for some close up work and played around with some of the images a bit. Here are the results:

I liked this one, which reminds me of the early colour plates found in field guides from the 1950’s:

A close up of the gills — beautifully textural.


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