Fungi Friday 🍄

Happy Fungi Friday! 🍄

Back in early November I headed out to my local woodland to see what the autumn had to show for itself. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of fungi fruiting. However, there was a typical late-autumn/winter mushroom that I tripped over towards the end of my walk.

It was the peak autumn, when the beech leaves were beginning to turn that fiery shade of yellow and orangey-brown.

When combing through (with my eyes) an area that is one of the best for fungi in the whole woodland, I found this single mushroom among the pine needles. This is an area of wet woodland that borders heathland formerly planted as pine plantation.

When I had a closer look, I could see there were many more of these mushrooms.

Hopefully this little video shows how well camouflaged they are.

The colour difference is quite interesting, some were more yellow than others.

Looking at the gills, they’re unmistakeable. These are winter chanterelles (Craterellus tubaeformis). The stipe is quite yellow as well. The caps look just like decaying leaves from above.

Here’s a sketchy phone pic showing the gills a little better. They’re described on iNaturalist as ‘shallow, decurrent, forked, and pale’.

Who needs a dog when you have a camera to pose with your mushrooms.

Just to confirm I wasn’t foraging these mushrooms though they are edible.

Thanks for reading.