Enjoyable Morning

    This morning I had a two hour fungi hunt in Wild Ken Hill wood and a very enjoyable hunt it turned out to be.

   The last couple of days had given us yet more rain showers all of which as improved the number of fungi appearing in the wood,  with I'm sure many more to come. The weather was perfect this morning, a nice breeze, some nice cloud cover along with some nice sunny spells.


   On my last visit I had found my first Dead Mans Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha), mature examples but I was still over the moon. I had noted the group of Beech trees and was going to return to have a closer look round, if there was one small group then there must be more and boy was I correct.


   I reached the area and within minutes I was on my knees photographing more fingers, this time much younger and larger groups. It got to the stage where I was finding them around the base of every other tree, they were everywhere. It always amazes me how one can wait ages to find a certain fungi then once you have to seem to spot them everywhere, I guess this what they call "getting your eye in".


    I left the area having taken lots of pictures and moved on to a large group of ancient Beech trees and it wasn't long before I unearthed a lovely small group of Amethyst Deceiver (Laccaria amethystiva). It was a big surprise as still a touch early but as I said I'm sure the wet weather is the reason so many members of kingdom fungi are popping up.


    The last good find was a massive Dryads Saddle, a real monster getting for 3 ft across, biggest so far for me this year. In all a good mornings search and I promise a lot more to come.




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