Fungi in Blakes Wood

Don't ever eat Boletus

If the tube-mouths they are red

Stay away from the amanitas

Or brother you are dead

The beautiful gills of a mushroom, I laid the camera underneath it and then just clicked. A walk in Blake's Wood this afternoon revealed puffballs, mushrooms and fungi. In actual fact it should be Sweet Chestnut Wood, for everywhere the ground was covered in the spiky pale green shells of the chestnut tree splitting open to reveal the four nutlets inside. A couple of people were picking bags full and I now know where to find the biggest nuts. Seems I will have to do a little research into what to do with them, apart from roasting on the fire, I collected a large pocketful of them.

The mushrooms were incredible it really has been a good year for fruit and nuts, and the mushrooms must love the damp weather we having having of late.

These two photos of white mushrooms were close together, so they may be one and the same species, note the bluish tinge in the above


Red agaric mushrooms, pretty but poisonous of course, no dainty fairy sat underneath



puffballs, apparently delicious to eat when young and still white inside, but as they grew older, and develope a dark green inside (the spores) no good for eating.

Sweet Chestnut tree

Strange creature the puffball, a lot of the mushrooms were nibbled, even the fly agaric, it has a stem but belongs to the puffball family...

Strange but maybe a puffball, bad photo

This has a cracked surface, could it be a russula? to answer myself no, but a decent mushroom book might help!

last words by Gary Snyder..

So here's to the mushroom family,

A far-flung friendly clan,
For food, for fun, for poison
They are a help to man.