Fungi Friday 🍄

Colgate, West Sussex, August 2025

In August I was perusing the woods in hope of some late summer shrooms. In these dry periods (August usually has rain, but not this year) it’s best to look for large dead or decaying wood.

And so it proved. I passed a large fallen pine trunk that has spent several years decaying, soaking up rain and moisture, getting mossy, and accommodating fungal life. Sounds like a good afterlife.

I found what I think are shaggy scalycaps, an extremely photogenic species.

So this post began as an ode to the shaggy scalycap. However, someone on social media has suggested this is instead a more scarce species – flaming scalycap!

Isn’t it beautiful? I think it looks like a good candidate for flaming scalycap. Looking on iNaturalist it appears this might be the first observation recorded (on iNat) in the south and east of England.

They were popping up from their little doorways across the trunk. Scalycaps are definitely a late summer to September mushroom, but it’s not impossible to see them in October or November.

Elsewhere my Ganoderma friend was spewing out their brown spores. This is the same one I posted about earlier in the summer.

Now then, what the heck is this mess. Is it a slime mould? Is it a fungus?

I don’t know at this stage, but it’s definitely alive.

Thanks for reading.