For my final post of 2020 I’m returning to my new found love of fungi with a round up of some more amazing species that I’ve found in the garden during the past month or so. I’m discovering that fungi are just like wild flowers – popping up unexpectedly all over the place, and in so many colourful and curious species. One of the useful things I’ve learned about fungi recently is that they can be roughly put into three groups: The saprophytes, which live on dead organic matter

I’m just loving the fungi. Now that I’ve got my fungi-finding radar fully primed, I’m coming across them everywhere – and lots of different ones too. Here are my favourites from the last week or so. Jelly Ear I think they look like jelly sweets – maybe sugar-dusted fruit leather. They often have an ear-like shape, hence the name. Previously they were known as Jew Ear, a link to the idea that Judas Iscariot hung himself from an elder tree (elder trees or fallen elder wood bein

I absolutely love how fungi sprout up all over the garden at this time of year as the colder, wetter atmosphere beckons them out to play. Their cheekiness fills me with childish delight – the way they pop up in a random spot, sometimes bold as brass in the middle of the lawn, sometimes tucked half out of sight in an overgrown corner. Sometimes alone, sometimes vast armies of them. Some cute and perfectly formed, some ugly, bulging and shapeless. I’ve been having great fun try