Mushroom season is definitely here.

Such a strange colour: surely Chlorociboria. You can read about it on Tom Volk's pages.  It stains the wood green - this was used for designs in 17th century inlaid boxes (Tunbridge Ware).

I went for a nice walk with my sister in Lower Woods this weekend. It's a lovely ancient woodland owned by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. You'll probably get a trip out there on your course at some point. We were idiotically intending to go to Westonbirt (the national tree zoo nearby) but I freaked out at the vast numbers of people flocking towards it (very slowly, the jams went back miles). It was like trying to get into some massive festival. No-one much was at Lower Woods though. I felt calm again.

I don't know what these lovely peachy furry brackets are yet.

I thought you might like to see a few of the things we saw. We stuck to the paths and were only looking at Things On Logs so I imagine there'd be many more traditionally mushroom-shaped species about. But we mostly saw the freaky things on decaying wood.

Maybe Ascocoryne sarcoides. (Some convincing likenesses at First Nature.)

So if you find anything interesting, please do bring it in to be frozen, and I will pop it in the queue for the freeze drier. I've already done some mushrooms for several students and it seems to be working well.

Dave found some Hedgehog fungi on a walk at the weekend. Imagine the excitement. They have spines instead of gills. Whatever next.

Hypnum repandum, Hedgehog fungus. Image D J Kelly.

And speaking of strange things,  I also found this, which turns out to be not a fungus at all, but a slime mould, namely Lycogala epidendrum. It was squishy to the touch. I do have a habit of investigating the relatively squishiness of all the peculiar mushroomy things I find. It's helpful with identification (and if you get unsuspecting accompanying friends to try too, you get a range of squealing noises).

These are very strange things. There are some more species on the First Nature website. Apparently some can solve mazes. I'm not kidding. Read more at the UBC Botanical Garden.

I'm supposed to be packing the field trip. But all this is a rabbit hole of interesting and distracting weirdness.

A quick fungi link: you can read all about Kew Gardens' "Fungarium" here.

30.10 Another mushroom update: I can't help myself so have bought a new book. It's by Peter Marren.  Its beautifully designed cover didn't help stop the money flying out of my account. It's supposed to be very engagingly written, and I hope it will fill me with interesting information to trot out to fellow mushroom hunters on field trips. I also read a very interesting article by him on A New Nature Blog in which he refutes the Forestry Commission's idea that picking fungi is Bad (for the fungi, that is).

You too may well find something interesting

Student B's exotic arachnid friend

This time last year I reported on an ex-taxonomic collectioner who had found a very rare and lovely lichen. You see, how many people are actually looking for these things? Not many. Most are watching ITV2 and playing games on their phones. And even the ones who are interested, are generally happy enough to leave their identification at "lichen" or maybe "some sort of Usnea lichen". But (unless it's really difficult to tell and drives you mad) there's much satisfaction to be had from being able to pin down the exact species.

This week, Student B brought in a cute little jumping spider (family Salticidae) which he'd found living somewhere at the zoo. There are 38 species in this country. But it wasn't any of those - it had very distinctive white pedipalps (which it was waving about) and lovely little spots on its abdomen. Not really knowing where to begin as there are a lot of jumping spiders in the world, we both asked on internet forums (I don't think this counts as cheating in this case). And it seems to be Hasarius adansoni, a common-enough creature in warmer parts of the world like Australia and Japan.

Come and use the lovely microscope camera with your finds- drop me an email.

I looked it up on the Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme website, and they only have 3 records of it in this country (ever), so I am urging Student B to send in his sighting. Maybe it's living everywhere and nobody's noticed - but maybe it's not. Certainly nobody else has ever reported it from Bristol Zoo. So be encouraged - you really can add to the knowledge we have about the species in this country. You don't have to find anything so exotic of course - even reporting common species is important to provide data about how their numbers and distribution might be changing, or the times of the year that they're active. It's all useful and feeds into a bigger picture.


Meanwhile - I had word from an ex collector of bryophytes, Student H. She's currently on a Bog Conservation placement in the Pennines. She's become so enamoured with the mosses there, that she's set up her own Instagram moss page. How cool is that. It makes me feel very happy. Fluffy and feathered creatures already have a lot of supporters. You can make a difference for the more weird and wonderful plants and animals of this country.

The lovely Sphagnum fimbriatum, CC James Lindsay.

I feel like I don't know anything (but that's alright)

A barkfly. Who'd have thought it. CC image S. Rae

 This morning I have been decanting some Tullgren funnel samples into pots for another class. I'm never fully convinced by whether they work, and also the leaf litter that was collected for them was pretty crispy - so the pots aren't exactly overflowing with creatures. But even so, I've spotted things in there that are going to make me look ignorant if someone asks me what they are.

Last year I spent a considerable amount of time swotting up about little soil creatures and making a guide: I learnt about things I had no idea existed (Protura, Symphyla) and realised I knew close to nothing about the groups I did recognise (Millipedes, Centipedes). And then today I ruefully realised that there are many many more things I don't know about that might be in those pots (Barkflies, Thrips... who knows) and I'm not going to become an expert before next week's class. Much as I'd like to be, for the students' sake as well as my own.

But this is not a reason to give up, is it. It's a reason to start. The world is full of amazing things. You can go and look for them and dip your toe into understanding how the world works. Knowing what's out there and where it is, underpins any scientific research in ecology and conservation.

Polyxenus lagurus, a perfectly common UK millipede. Who knew. CC image Andy Murray.

I also find it quite good for existential angst, as all those plants and creatures are out there doing their thing regardless. That's quite reassuring when you get depressed by the absurdity of your own species (from international politics, to celebrity 'culture', to daft things happening in your own social sphere, to your own behaviour).

So my point is, don't be daunted by feeling you don't know anything at the start of this assignment. Ok, maybe some people know a little. You might fear they know a lot. But it's not a 'zero sum game' as they say - their knowledge isn't going to make yours less, and in fact I can tell you from experience that people are very generous in sharing their skills. Pick something you think you'll find interesting, and dive in. Rome wasn't built in a day (and all that). Remember that all those admirable experts started with a single beetle, or wild flower, or barkfly, once upon a time. Begin now.

Charles Darwin age 7. Painted by Ellen Sharples in 1816.

P.S. A ridiculous and authentic post script.
I spent some of the lesson staring down a microscope with student J, trying to work out what the tiny 4-winged, long-antennaed creature in the petri dish was. In retrospect I think it was a bark fly, though this definitely didn't occur to me at the time. It's a shame isn't it. I can only trust that your young flexible brains will cotton on to things much faster. Here's a gallery of them so I don't get confused next time.