Fungi Friday 🍄

High Weald AONB, West Sussex, July 2023

Social media was awash with photos of blushers and boletes, so I thought it was a good time to visit one of my local woodlands.

The mushrooms were few and far between until I passed through a damp area with a large fallen beech tree. The standing core of the beech was softened by recent rain and ongoing decay.

I didn’t have anything in mind when looking more closely, when I found these tiny orange discs stashed away between the wood’s fibres. I was pretty tired at the time and really struggled to get decent images. Mainly the difficulty was in keeping the camera steady in getting focused images of these tiny cup fungi in low light. I used my phone torch in the absence of a flash.

They were eyelash fungi, a species I’ve been hoping to see but never really sought out. That’s the beauty of fungi, so much diversity and seasonality you never know what might appear.

What I like about the photo above is that I didn’t see the solitary wasp until editing this photo. Amazing what you can see when you really look.

Thanks for reading.