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!

Three grans walk no.3

On Saturday we walked from the World Heritage site of New Lanark mills up alongside the river, through woods rich in wild flowers, to the Falls of Clyde at Corra Linn, and onward to the weir at Bonnington Linn. The river banks are steep in this part of the Clyde's journey to the sea and the ground is often boggy so a boardwalk has been built to saunter along. We did a fair bit of sauntering, along with crouching to get pictures of wild flowers. Rain showers, making getting my camera out of my rucksack and out of its dry bag too much of a trachle, meant I took most of them with my phone camera. I haven't quite sussed how to improve exposure so some of them are overexposed. Still, they were sufficient as record shots for the 8pm Sunday #wildflowerhour on Twitter run by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.

Given how dry the weather has been of late, we were pleasantly surprised at just how much water was coming over the falls. The Clyde catchment area is quite large so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised.
<< Two of us

the route

I'll post the flower pics in roughly alphabetical order of their common names because that's easiest and I can't fully remember the order we spotted them in. Not that it matters.

Alternate-leaved Golden-saxifrage

Bilberry

Bitter Vetch

Broom

Cowslip

Great Stitchwort

Great Wood-rush

Large Bittercress

Leopard's-bane

Pink Purslane so pale it's white

Out of focus Red Campion
with bluebells and Gt.Stitchwort

Thyme-leaved Speedwell

Wood Speedwell

Violets

Wild strawberry just below a badger sett

As we did the upper part of the walk's loop we came across this dodecadal structure made of hand hewn sticks and some ingenious stick joiners–sort of a grown up version of some kids' construction toys, I suppose. It looked as if it is meant for pow-wows or, perhaps, lessons and singalongs. We wondered if it ever has a cover. Maybe that is still to come.

Then we walked back to the mill shop, where I bought a new wallet part of whose construction is of New Lanark wool (I lost my lovely, old, Florentine leather one in Edinburgh last year), and we refreshed ourselves with tea and, for two of us, caramel pie, and for the other, fruity/oaty flapjack.

This jumper, that I'm still knitting (one and a half sleeves to go!), is also New Lanark wool.