A line of golden setae

The sun was sinking as the smoke from my small bonfire drifted up the garden and its rays shone through the  bright setae of the moss growing on the trunk of the fallen wild cherry tree.

It was high winds one night in December 2013 that brought the old wild cherry tree down. We knew it was affected by the parasitic fungus, Laetiporus sulphureu (Chicken of the woods), so its collapse was not totally surprising. One of its offspring is still holding part of it up. The same storm also brought down a tall eucalyptus which added some interest to the climbing frame.

Some of the eucalyptus wood is still in the woodshed. It burns well in the stove. Some day I might shuffle up the old cherry trunk and start sawing branches....

Fungi were few

Fungal finds were few this morning on my woodland welly wander, though I did spot a brown birch bolete masquerading as a hot cross bun and some toodler-sized jelly babies.

I also found a small but deep paddling pool fed by its own small waterfall and with plenty of scope for exploration near it. I've 'bookmarked' the place in my mind, for the benefit of visiting grandsons in due course, as 'directly above the larches' that grow at the bottom of the field below the wood. The larches are still very green. I love their late autumn colour change.

I thought the line of stones looked almost as if there had been an ancient wall there. At the lip of the pool the water was well over my feet. In the centre the water would have come over the tops of my wellies.

Autumn leaves and fungi

The early autumn has been good for fungi both in the garden and beyond in the woodland above. I loved the fact that a beech leaf from the wood up the hill had fallen against this small mushroom and that a ray of sunshine caught the glorious colour just when I happened to be passing that part of the garden.

Light through leaves is always lovely

Here are some other favourite fungal finds this month and last:


Gotta love (but not eat!) a mushroom that turns blue when you cut it!

Lurid Bolete/Suillelus luridus

Fungussy welly wander in the wood

It being beautifully autumnal yesterday morning, and not raining, I decided to go on a fungal foray on the farm track above the garden and in the woods just above that. It was partly to check if there were any chanterelles in the usual place by the burn. Nope. Either there has been too much sheep and heifer traffic along there this year or conditions have not been right for other reasons.

Chanterelle habitat in previous years

Before I climbed over our corner 'stile' though, I spotted this purple-staining milkcap mushroom at the top of the garden. under the goat willow.

And then this mushroom gowing on the woodpile up there





This is the 'stile', Boggybrae style, at the west corner of the garden. I use the mossy wall at the right of the photo as a step.

Here's the one, barricaded against heifers, in the south corner (the west and south corners of the garden are at the top, the south one being the highest on the slope that is Boggybrae).

without the branches, it's a swing your leg over
kind of stile

No chanterelles by the burn then, but there was plenty of this eyelash fungus on the cowpats. And this tiny inkcappy-looking one:


At this point I was beginning to think: "Cannae move for fungi!" 😀 Here are four more within a few steps of each other still in the back farm track:


Wandering back up the track towards what I call the umbonnate field (because, from across the loch, its shape looks like a huge umbonnate mushroom cap), it was these Vermillion Waxcaps that called me over the fence into the wood. Such a stunning colour!

Before even crossing the wee feeder burn of Hattonburn, I spotted these:

Then, having tested my rather old wellies' waterproofness, I scruffled around in a fairly small area of woodland looking at a large number of fungi. It's not a simple 'walk in the woods' kind of wood; definitely more of a scruffle getting anywhere as the pics below show. Managed not to get my hat yanked off by a stray branch or bramble this time though. I think that's a first.

Scruffle woodland

My way back to my sit-upon-ery and gloves
(leather, for barbed wire and brambles)

Lots of things like this, boletes past their best, perhaps. There were plenty of young ones too.


A selection of fungi on wood:



Some webcaps



Some more on the ground, including some that I think of as "frilly gillers". The yellow one, whose colour the phone camera had difficulty capturing, was plentiful. I'm not sure if it is Yellow Swamp Brittlegill/Russula claroflava but we have had that in the garden sometimes. The photos here show tiny fraction of all that was to be seen.

And still, after all my scruffling, I was within easy sight of South Stile.
You don't have to go far for a fungal foray on Boggybrae.
A mizzle of rain started a this juncture. It had turned into heavy rain by the time I was back in the house.


I see one of the frillies is duplicated. Blogger has begun to play sillybuggers so I won't try to delete one of them!