When is a fungus not a fungus?

Dog Vomit, Wolf's milk... there are some very imaginative names for things that look like a fungus.  But appearances can be deceptive.  Here is an example of something I saw whilst walking round Loch Imrich (Newtonmore) yesterday. It was growing on a rotting tree stump and although it was quite small it was an startling colour:

The tree stump

Getting closer

A closer look showed it was made up of lots of small fingers and looked a bit like a sea anemone or coral. My guess is that this is a slime mould.  These are fascinating organisms which are neither plant nor fungus but single celled organisms which spend most of their lives separately and invisible to the naked eye, but then come together when there is plenty of food available and produce these fruiting bodies like the one in the photo.  Soon it will change its appearance and produce spores ( I might go and have a look tomorrow!).  Looking at photos online, this one might be Tubifera ferruginosa, Raspberry slime mould.

I think I found the Dog Vomit slime mould in the woods by Wolftrax - another startlingly bright colour.

I did go and look at the Loch Imrich slime mould again and it has now changed to a muddy brown. I assume it will be releasing its spores soon.

Slime moulds have fascinating behaviour. Although they have no brain, collectively they can solve mazes in search of food, and can learn. You can read more about them here and see some amazingly beautiful photos of them here

And there is even a video from the BBC here

Fruits, fungus and flies

 Autumn is coming at last, after what has felt like an extended summer with no frosts yet.  Some of the birch leaves ae turning yellow and many of the plants have gone to seed or are bearing fruit.  This post will be heavy on photos as I have been capturing some of the different fruits I have seen locally.

But before then, a bit more on the fungus I mentioned in my last post (Amanita crocea). One of the toadstools became food for another fungus and grew a cap of white hair:

And I thought no fungus post would be complete without a photo of Fly Agaric, the archetypal fairy toadstool, which is quite plentiful locally.

The toadstools are actually the fruits of the fungus and are grown to distribute its spores.  The rest of the plant is beneath the ground as a network of threads. 

The bright red colour of many fruits seems particularly attractive to birds and in October the migrating Fieldfares and Redwings will strip the Rowan of its berries.

Rowan

Nothing seems to eat the red rosehips though.

Rosehips

Honeysuckle berries

Some of last year's leeks have been left to flower and are providing food for several bees and flies.

Finally, it always seems like autumn when the conkers appear on the Horse Chestnut.

There aren't many Horse Chestnut trees locally.  This one is on Glen Road, Newtonmore.

A few Fungi

 There are several fungi appearing in my garden and in the woods.  They grow quite quickly to start with so I took a series of photos of one by my veg patch:

Day 1@ 9am, Day 1 @5pm, Days 2,3,4,5

The most interesting part is the first couple of days and then it looks much the same apart from the cap turning up. I think this particular fungus is Amanita crocea as it has a bright orange-yellow colour.  It emerges from a sac which stays as a ragged  collar at the base of the stalk which has felty orange scales. The underside of the cap has a series of gills which produce spores. My book says "Widespread but locally distributed and nowhere common" (except perhaps in my garden!).

It prefers growing under birch which is exactly where it is. I was clearing some grass to make a flower bed and found lots more at different stages.

Around Loch Imrich is a good place to find fungi.  There is a large brown downy one that reminds me of pancakes. 

 

You can see  the edge of the cap rolls under, so I think this might be Brown Roll-Rim which is poisonous.

This pale yellow one, I think, is Larch Bolete which grows only with Larch trees.  Instead of gills, the underside of the cap has lots of little pores .  Having pores rather than gills is a characteristic of the Boletes, most of which are edible - but not necessarily tasty..  

I would not recommend eating anything unless you are 100% sure of  the species.