Fungi 🍄: 3 days on Dartmoor – day three

Your Christmas gift from me is the final part of my 2021 Dartmoor mushroom trilogy, following on from parts one and two.

I hope you can have a nice Christmas and holiday. Solidarity with anyone alone or grieving at this time. Here’s to happier times.

This post is all phone pics so there is a bit of a drop in resolution and quality, but that’s not all that matters in photography. The finds here were based on a walk from the edge of Dartmoor National Park into one of the nearby towns, outside the boundary. I found some lovely species, some of which I hadn’t seen for some time.

The walk began from our hotel, passing through a slither of ancient woodland that had been planted up with sweet chestnut perhaps over a century ago. I was delighted to find one of the first hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa) that I’d seen for several years. Also – how chivalrous am I!

A nice large spread of mushrooms on an old stump in a hedgeline were this group of scalycaps. I expect these are probably golden scalycap (Pholiota aurivella).

Cemeteries are excellent places for wildlife, sometimes for rare species of plants, invertebrates and fungi. This small churchyard is no exception to that. The main reason for this is that the grasslands are cut regularly and kept open, being in a state of grassland for hundreds of years or more.

Honey fungus (Armillaria) has had quite a late start to the year in southern England. I have found it in this particular churchyard before. I think this cluster were growing where the roots of a tree once were.

Churchyards are good places to find waxcaps, a family of mushrooms that are mainly found in ancient, unimproved grasslands. This means the grasslands haven’t been ploughed up or fertilised, hence why sacred sites like churchyards are good for them. I found a gathering of small yellow waxcaps which have been identified on iNaturalist as butter waxcap (Hygrocybe ceracea). I love the gills of waxcaps, and the phone camera does do them some justice.

At first thought this very small mushroom was a waxcap but it probably isn’t. One suggestion is that it may be a type of funnel.

As witnessed elsewhere on Dartmoor the day before, I found a couple of blackening waxcaps (Hygrocybe conica). This nicely illustrates the shift from a Wine Gum yellow to the blackening stipe.

Closer to the large cedar seen in the wider image of the churchyard, there were several blushers (Amanita rubescens) dotted around the grasslands.

Perhaps the most beautiful find, and one I’ve never knowingly discovered before was bitter waxcap (Hygrocybe mucronella). If the gills of the butter waxcap were beautiful, the combination of pale yellow and orange backdrop are something else. The gills radiating towards the stipe from the edge of the cap also look to me like flames.

Thanks for reading. Extra points if you read all three posts!

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