Fungi Friday 🍄

fungi photography by Daniel Greenwood

Dartmoor fungi 2025: Ilsington Wood & churchyard

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Daniel Greenwood

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Ilsington, Dartmoor, Devon, November 2025

This post includes cool sightings from Ilsington Wood and the churchyard.

A brown gall with a hole in it, attached to the large black root of a fallen tree
A brown gall with a hole in it, attached to the large black root of a fallen tree, seen from the side.

This looks like a fungus, grows like a fungus but isn’t a fungus. It’s Andricus quercusradicis, a type of gall created by a wasp. I saw this in the dark originally on the way back from the pub, but returned in daylight to get some better photos. It was growing on the upturned roots of a fallen tree.

Four round black fungal fruiting bodies with a jelly-like top, growing from a lichen-encrusted branch.
A black fungal fruiting-body with a smooth top, sat in a bed of green lichen and moss

Black bulgar is a species I only ever see on freshly fallen oak branches. It may also be on beech sometimes, but I have vivid memories of it fruiting on a big oak in south London once, a few weeks or months after it fell down.

The cloudy grey cap of a mushroom among brown, green and yellow leaves on the woodland floor.

This is probably clouded funnel, and is not a great photo really.

Brown, fan-like fungal fruiting bodies on a piece of decaying birch wood, surrounded by wet, brown oak leaves.

I need to go on a smaller polypore training course (is there such a thing?), but I would say these are probably turkeytail. Lovely autumnal scene.

Light brown, stripy, fan-like fungal fruiting bodies on a piece of wood

This is a different trametes (turkeytail relative), it’s ochre bracket. It lacks the darker brown colouring of turkeytail.

A golden-coloured fungus with icicle-like growths that are holding amber-coloured droplets of water.

I was really intrigued by this fungus growing on a dead tree’s heartwood. It appears to be a toothcrust. I could have done with a tripod here to capture more of the water droplets. It was getting darker and I had a very slow shutter speed on the camera (which makes blur more likely).

White mushroom upturned in moss and grass
Two small white mushrooms reclining in the grass

A little white waxcap in a churchyard usually flashes up in my mind as a snowy waxcap, but apparently the gills are too close together for that species.

A black, tongue-like fungus fills the frame, surrounded by the bright green of grass

Another earthtongue growing in ancient grassland – I usually only find these in churchyards.

A white lichen with black spots radiating from the centre, among other lichens that look map-like.

This could be black-eye lichen but I’m not sure.

A yellow lichen with little sun-shapes dotted throughout.

This is likely a gold-speck lichen.

A brown mushroom cap frayed in places where the gills have been broken. The mushroom is among blades of grass

A bonnet in very poor light.

A creamy mushroom cap among grass blades
An upturned white mushroom with umbrella-like gills.
The upturned cap of a white mushroom, showing vortex-like gills among the leaves of herbs.

I thought this might be a waxcap but it’s perhaps ivory bonnet. This mushroom has been placed in different groups over the years, and though it’s not a proper bonnet (Mycena), it is sitting in that group for the timebeing.

Thanks for reading.

More Dartmoor mushroom blogs:

Dartmoor fungi 2025: Chagford
Dartmoor fungi 2025: Bovey valley woods
Dartmoor fungi 2025: around Haytor

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