Some highlights from our walk around Brandon Country Park.

Fuligo septica.

A rose coloured Tubifera ferruginosa with a more mature greyish violet clump surrounding the pine needle.

Could the slime mould below be the plasmodial stage of Physarum polycephalum ?

EDIT 06.01.24: This could possibly be the plasmodial form of Badhamia utricularis.

It’s always wonderful to find Calocera viscosa (yellow staghorn).

The parachute fungi below could be Marasmius rotula (collared parachute) or perhaps Gymnopus androsaceus (horsehair parachute).

The main difference between the two is that the gills of M. rotula attach to a collar around the stem whereas with G. androsaceus the gills attach directly to the stem [First Nature].

After a Google image search, I think the fungus below is Rhizina undulata (doughnut fungus or pine firefungus) .

Wikipedia states that it “grows on burned soil or conifer debris”, and indeed we found it along a path adjacent to a conifer stand that had been subject to fire.

We found this black growth along the same path — could it be burnt Rhizina undulata ?

On the perimeter of the heath adjacent to the conifer stands, fellow wanderers alerted us to some strange growths by the path that “looked like slices of tree trunk”.

The fungi below are Coltricia perennis (tiger’s eye) and are not common — found on the edges of conifer plantations and on acidic heathland [1].

No image search could help with identifying these mottled fungi that were growing off pinecones — but could they actually be Auriscalpium vulgare – earpick fungus.

The curiously unsettling yet beautiful Pseudoinonotus dryadeus (oak bracket).

I don’t know what the following fungi are but I find the gill and the pore structures fascinating.

[1] Coltricia perennis at First Nature