Soomaa National Park, Estonia

We were lucky enough to get away during August to Latvia and Estonia, for a wonderful break. Nature took a bit of a back seat to the beaches and medieval cities, but we did visit the Soomaa National Park in Southern Estonia. This park is huge; a matrix of forests and meadows centred around a massive raised bog - one of the biggest in Europe. The forest was quite silent in this season, but somehow the wet day (our only one of the holiday!) brought out the best in the forest fungi and bog plants.

Apple & Gooseberry Mildew

The wet winter seems to have encouraged mildew to set in on my fruit bushes. American Gooseberry Mildew (Podosphaera mors-uvae, #572) infects the fruit buds and then spreads to the neighbouring leaves, where Apple Powdery Mildew (Podosphaera leucotricha, #576) starts in the young buds on the tree. Both fungi will have infected the bushes last summer and then thanks to the wet early spring, now manifested as powdery white spores on the leaves and fruit. The apples have no blossom or fruit this year, as they cropped last year and must be a variety that only fruits alternate years. The gooseberry crop though was looking good, but now it does not appear quite so appetising.

#576 Apple Powdery Mildew (Podosphaera leucotricha)

Little Japanese Umbrellas

I’m growing some sweetcorn plants in toilet roll tubes on the kitchen window-sill, ready to be planted out in the veg patch, and these fungi popped up in the compost. They are Pleated Inkcaps, Parasola plicatilis; alternatively known (rather sweetly) as Little Japanese Umbrella fungi. They’re really short-lived - here today and gone tomorrow - and very small and delicate.

A Glimmer of Life

After the rain it was good to get out and do some gardening. It’s always good to know that the garden toads have made it through the winter. I live in hope that one year I’ll have some spawn in one of my basins - not long to wait until I found out if this is the year. Wood ear fungus has a good year, growing on the dead elder stump, where it’s been used to add some texture to soups during the winter. Finally a Common Plume Moth lurking in the herb garden was a surprise to me, but apparently this species does show up in all months of the year.

#349 Common Plume (Emmelina monodactyla)

#108 Common Toad (Bufo bufo)

#10 Wood-ear Fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae)

Quiet Season

It’s not a great season for garden wildlife, but anyhow I added a couple of new species to the list. The damp weather probably contributes to a growth of Rose Powdery Mildew fungus on my climbing rose and this small crane fly, with mottled wings and stripey legs is Limonia nubeculosa, a new one for the garden.

#549 Rose Powdery Mildew (Sphaerotheca pannosa)

#550 Limonia nubeculosa

Fungi on Bredon Hill

Walking up Bredon Hill at the weekend, there was a fine array of fungi on view in the sheep-grazed meadows at the top of the Hill. They mostly appeared to be Waxcaps of different kinds, including Snowy Waxcap (Cuphophyllus virgineus), Meadow Puffballs (Lycoperdon pratense) and some dark-coloured leathery looking toadstools I took to be Melanoleuca species (probably based on habitat, M. melaleuca). Puffballs are edible, but I didn’t pick them; so are Snowy Waxcaps, but with these I’m just not confident enough in my identification skills to be sure I’m not eating something poisonous.

Squatting the Sparrow Terrace

Our sparrow nest box had a once-in-every-few-years clean-out last weekend. Usually, we have 3-4 pairs of House Sparrows nesting on the house; two under the roof eaves and one in each end of the 3-chamber sparrow nest box (for some reason the birds prefer an end-terrace dwelling). Cleaning out the old nests we found a few squatters, including Harlequin Ladybirds, Yellow Mealworm Beetle larvae (Tenebrio molitor, #547) and a hibernating Small Tortoiseshell butterfly. The mealworms are the same ones that you buy as bird food, but I had no idea that a natural habitat of these darkling beetle larvae was scavenging around the bottom of birds nests.

On the exterior of the box, there was a good growth of Variable Oysterling fungi (Crepidotus variabilis, #548) on the front edge and underside of the plywood lid of the bird box. These are odd-looking brown fungi that don’t have a stem; the gilled canopy grows straight out of the wood. There was a nice patch of grey/green foliose lichen (#275 Physcia caesia) on the nest box lid.

The sparrows may not be around at the moment, but this female Sparrowhawk is regularly lurking about the garden, casting a beady yellow eye at the Woodpigeons.

#548 Variable Oysterling fungus (Crepidotus variabilis)

#275 Physcia caesia lichen

#6 Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

Fairy Ring Mushroom (#505)

I don’t get many fungi in the garden, so it was a pleasant surprise to find a crop of what I believe were Fairy Ring Mushrooms (Marasmius oreades) popping up out of the lawn this weekend. I suppose the damp conditions are better for fungi than the dry heat of last summer. I would be pretty happy to have fairy rings in my lawn, so hopefully the mushrooms find the place to their liking.

Coral Spot Fungus (#423)

Strong winds brought down many twigs from high up in the large beech tree above the garden. Some of the dead wood had these hard, orange dots that had pushed up through the bark. These “pustules” are from Coral Spot Fungus (Nectria cinnabarina), a common saprophyte growing on dead wood of hardwood trees. Though it starts on the dead wood, it does eventually spread to healthy wood, contributing to the eventual decay of the tree. There were several small insects on the infected wood, many more than on the healthy twigs that had come down. I suppose the trees natural defenses against insects may be weakened by the fungus or (or probably and) the decaying wood has more food available to insects.

#423 Coral Spot Fungus (Nectria cinnabarina)

Elder Tree Dead-wood Fungi

I left these large logs from a dead elder tree in the corner of the garden and they attract a lot of wildlife; plenty of insects and even a hibernating toad.

Wood Ear Fungus (aka Jelly Ear Fungus) loves to grow on Elder deadwood, and there’s a good growth of it here. It sends out new fruit-bodies in the winter, which then darken and dry out during the year. The young growths are edible, a bit like black fungus you sometimes find in Chinese food; not much flavour apparently but an interesting texture if cut into strips in soup or salad. Will have to give it a try sometime.

Another fungus, this time on the dead stump of the same Elder tree, is Elder Whitewash (Hyphodontia sambuci), which appears as a white coating on the dead bark.

#10 Wood Ear Fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae)

#108 Common Toad (Bufo bufo)

#413 Elder Whitewash fungus (Hyphodontia sambuci)

Small Things growing in Dark Dank Corners

Part of the bio-blitz, especially in this season, is about checking some of the hidden corners of the garden for things that I might have missed before. Procumbent Pearlwort (#366) was lurking in a damp corner of the front yard, hidden by bamboo and one of my pond/basins. A tiny Wall Rue Spleenwort (#375) growing between the bricks by the dustbins, is only my second species of fern in the garden. A solitary Dwarf Bell toadstool (#376) emerging among the mosses in a neglected planter is my first new species of fungus this Autumn; hopefully there will be a few more in the next month or so. All three are quite small and insignificant, but they are part of the ecology of the garden.

#366 Procumbent Pearlwort (Sagina procumbens)

#375 Wall Rue (Asplenium ruta-muraria)

#376 Dwarf Bell Toadstool (Galerina pumila)