Monday, November 09, 2009

More 'Shrooms

While walking the Red Menace this morning I noted some newly emerged mushrooms at the back of our site. One lone beautiful purple mushroom was of a type I hadn't seen before, of course that category includes most of the mushrooms of the world.

After the cat was back inside I got the camera and took a couple of pictures. Then I spent an hour looking at all the pictures of purple mushrooms in my book and comparing ones that looked suspiciously like the one in question with examples on the web.

Certainly a beautiful thing, a lovely royal purple-brown with a pitted tan underside that has no gill structure. I have come to the tenuous conclusion that my mushroom is a Boletus Mirabilis, sometimes known as the "bragger's bolete".

Surprising how many different kinds of mushrooms are found in this very small area. I'm trying to count how many I have seen in this 10 x 40 foot space in the last 18 months and it must be at least a dozen, including the semi-transparent and gelatinous cup fungus which grew in the garden last year, and now this purple beauty.

I'm going to quit looking up!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I saw two very white mushrooms on the edge of our lane. I will take pictures tomorrow them and some other ones. Hopefully they won't leave in the night.