Fungi Friday 🍄

Happy Fungi Friday! 🍄

Recently I’ve been keeping an eye on some slithers of verge and lawn around the car park of my offices. I’ve seen a surprising number of waxcaps popping up, which suggest some of the grasslands are quite old.

Now, I am not strong on the waxcaps (hygrocybe) but iNaturalist is helping me to get a few identified.

This one reminds me mainly of jelly sweets, but it’s purported to be hygrocybe acutoconica.

It’s got a lot of waxcappy loveliness going on.

The car park has these bays which are designed to allow wildflowers to grow in small holes in the concrete shapes, and for water to drain through. Most of these bays had their own waxcaps growing from them.

These are likely part of the blackening waxcap complex. It’s a complex because blackening waxcap is a name given to a number of genetically different but similar looking species.

In a nearby cemetery (great places for waxcaps) I saw these more recently, more typical looking blackening waxcaps (also known as witches bonnet).

Again looking like fruit gums, a hint of the blackening beginning to happen.

On another verge nearby I spotted yet more waxcaps. Their jellyish complexion is a signifier for me.

I wasn’t sure what they were at first, knowing that waxcaps are variable.

The closer I looked the more I could see a green hue.

You can see that green blemish under the gills nicely. The strong gills here are typical of waxcaps.

Also atop the caps on these more robust but still small shrooms.

Then my eyes adjusted and I saw these very small but green waxcaps. I realised that in fact these were parrot waxcaps!

Very kindly, the landowner and ground maintenance staff reacted to my pointer that the parrot waxcaps were there and uncommon by putting up sticks so as not to mow them. Nice work!

Thanks for reading.