Mushroom Season
Hello everyone on this damp miserable October afternoon. It may be damp and miserable for us but the fungi are loving it. We have recorded a lot of different fungi species over the last few weeks and I'm finding them really fascinating. Alas, I think we are all struggling a bit with ID because there are so many that look very similar. I am told that mushroom ID can be a very tactile affair, sometimes having to touch, smell and even taste them at times. Please DON'T taste any though as there are some truly nasty ones about. I think with names like deathcap and destroying angel you can imagine what the consequences would be! Personally I will be sticking firmly to Asda mushrooms.
It is also noticeable that the community on iNaturalist are also struggling to ID our fungi images. I think that is because it is quite a specialist area and you will need to take photos of the gills, the stem and closeups of the cap with a scale indicator to have some hope of them being identified. Where fungi is concerned the more photos the better; So concentrate on photos from every angle including gills and stem........oh and have a sniff but not a taste.
Having said that please do keep uploading them to iNaturalist as we can research them later.
We now have 495 species on iNaturalist, although sightings have inevitably slowed at this time of year. Keep uploading though as our data has proved invaluable over the last few months. More on that at a later date.
Keep looking for those mushrooms!
