Since finding the red and white toadstools, I’ve been keeping my eye open for unusual types of fungi and have discovered several on woodland walks. I can’t even hazard a guess at naming most of them, but this could be another fly agaric with its spots washed off. Continue reading “WalkingSquares: Toadstools”
Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric
Early autumn is a great time to hunt for fungi, so I have spent some time searching for the most atmospheric of all, red and white spotted toadstools, in all the likely and less likely places I could think of near where I live. As often happens, when I was not searching, I glanced up and had the thrill of seeing twenty or thirty of them growing on a hillside in a narrow strip of mixed, light woodland on the edge of peaty moorland.
Toadstools are the fruiting bodies of underground mycelial networks. Happy to return to earth, they emerge only briefly after a rain, swelling rapidly to full size then rotting back after releasing spores from white gills on the undersides of their caps.
Continue reading “Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric”