Stinkhorns

Stinkhorn, Phallus impudicus.  Hayes Common, 28 October 2015.

Some fungi are smelly.  It's obvious from their name that stinkhorns are prominent among them.

This one is called Phallus impudicus, the unashamed penis.  You can get away with a name like that if you use Latin.  In fact, the word phallus comes originally from Greek, which makes it even more classical and therefore less rude.  Unlike the actual fungus.

This is our commonest stinkhorn, and I came across this lovely specimen on Hayes Common today (as I write).  Stinkhorns emerge from round objects known as eggs, and quickly reach their full size, with a brown cap that smells of excrement.  You can just see the top of the egg at the base of this one.

The brown stuff is called gleba, and contains the spores.  It attracts flies ..

Various flies on a Stinkhorn, Phallus impudicus.  Hayes Common, 28 October 2015.

Here you can see a dungfly, a flesh fly, a couple of housefly relatives and some smaller flies with red eyes that I don't recognise.  It's clearly popular.  This specimen is quite fresh.  The gleba will be all gone in a day or so, leaving a white skeleton which you can see part of near the top.  The flies will distribute the spores on their legs.  Here's a photo of a stripped one:

Phallus impudicus, Stinkhorn, stripped of its gleba.   Keston Common with the Orpington Field Club, 19 October 2013.

I have a photo of a similar specimen from Spring Park, West Wickham, but it is being held in the hand of someone who would rather not see that photo on line.

Dog Stinkhorn, Mutinus caninus.  West Wickham Common, 27 October 2015.

Only the day before I saw the beauty in the first photo, I had seen another stinkhorn species on the common next door.  This Dog Stinkhorn has fallen over, and I was actually thinking about it and wishing I could have seen it while it was still upright when I came across the fresh P. impudicus.

You can see that the two are very similar in form, but the Dog Stinkhorn is slimmer, and usually yellower.

Dog Stinkhorn, Mutinus caninus, with two fresh eggs.  Near Ightham Mote, 4 October 2015.

Here's a rather mangled Dog Stinkhorn I saw when out with the Orpington Field Club near Ightham Mote a couple of weeks ago.  You can see the empty egg it grew from on the right, and there are also two developing eggs in this scene.  This also gives you a good idea of how soft and gooey the gleba is.  If you see a stinkhorn, I suggest you should not touch the smelly gleba.  Just have a cautious sniff and then step back.

Here's one from High Elms in 2013, still fresh and upright:

Mutinus caninus, Dog Stinkhorn.  Orpington Field Club outing to High Elms Country Park, 12 October 2013.

I have found stinkhorns before by smelling them first, then looking around.  You might think a thoughtless dog owner has just passed, or paused, at that spot, and indeed it might be so, but on the other hand you might be lucky! 

Stinkhorns are always an interesting find.

Woodland Leaf Fall

Aspen  leaves on the ground on Hayes Common, 27 October 2015.

Hayes Common is mostly secondary woodland.  In Victorian times it was nearly all heath, and there was a clear view all the way from Hayes to Keston, where day trippers used to walk.  Now it is mixed deciduous woodland; mostly oaks, then beech, with a few other species such as silver birch scattered in there.

Here are some typical woodland floors.  I have already posted a Norway Maple leaf so I'll omit that.  So here, the first is under an aspen. The leaf stems are flattened along a vertical plane, which allows them to shiver in the wind.   Throughout the wood you will normally also see a few oak and beech leaves, as you can here.

Beech leaves on the ground on Hayes Common, 27 October 2015.

This is under a beech.  You can see that the leaves have not gone uniformly brown, which is not ideal for the tree as it has not managed to absorb all the goodness back into itself.

Sweet Chestnut leaves on the ground on Hayes Common, 27 October 2015.

Sweet Chestnut leaves are much larger.  In summer they make a wonderful canopy; the quality of the light that comes though is magical.  Again, some oak leaves are scattered among these.  There are so many oaks that the leaves get everywhere.

Oak leaves on the ground on Hayes Common, 27 October 2015.

And this, finally, is actually under an oak tree.  You can see lots of twiggy litter there as well as the leaves.

So, you can see that the character of the woodland floor in Autumn is very different under different types of tree.  They absorb and reflect light differently and have very different colour tones.

I didn't go out on purpose to collect these.  I was out for a walk and decided to take a few pics with my iPhone as I was on the home stretch.   Variety is everywhere!

Autumn Colours

Leaf of Norway Maple, Acer planatoides.  Hayes Common, 18 October 2015.

Norway Maples look remarkably similar to Sycamores, but have spikier leaves that turn vivid red-brown in autumn.  Sycamore leaves in autumn tend to be covered with the big black spots of tar spot fungus, and look much less colourful.

Of course, it is not only tree leaves that show the colours of the season.

Russula species.  Keston Common, 27 September 2015.

There are colourful fungi everywhere too  This one is probably the Beechwood Sickener, Russula nobilis, but there are other similar species.  It grows under and around beech trees.

Yellows are often represented by this common species.

Stereum hirsutum, Hairy Curtain Crust.  Keston Common, 26 September 2015.

It groes on dead wood and is very common on the cut or broken ends of fallen trunks or branches.  Later on it will have lost some of its brightness.

There are other colours too, less often associated with autumn, such as this:

Laccaria amethystina, Amethyst Deceiver.  Keston Common, 27 September 2015.

The Amethyst Deceiver is often found in shady areas of woodland.  You might wonder how such a fungus could deceive anyone.  It's certainly easy to spot when fresh like this, but it's possible for the cap to fade with age and look like any one of several other species.

I have been taking lots of fungus photos so there will be more in subsequent posts, not all as colourful as this, unfortunately!

Streptocarpus Species

Three Streptocarpus species grown from seed.  Hayes, 17 October 2015.

Earlier this year I sent off for a packet of mixed Streptocarpus species seed.  For those who don't know Streptocarpus, a multitude of horticultural hybrids are sold every year.  Many of them are covered with colourful flowers all summer, and some are supposed to flower all year round.

The original species are not so showy, and there is an unusual variety of forms.  Here are three.  On the right is Streptocarpus thompsonii (I'm pretty sure), which is said to grow up to a meter tall, so it will be hard to find room for it.  It looks like a conventional plant of shrubby form with thick succulent stems.  No flowers as yet.

In the centre is a Streptocarpus rexii, which looks very much like all the hybrids you can buy, but with fewer flowers.  (Just one for now, but there are more buds.)  The flowers are quite lovely.

Flower of Streptocarpus rexii grown from seed.  Hayes, 17 October 2015.

I can see why people have made the effort to develop them.  This plant takes the form of a ground-hugging rosette of leaves.

On the left is a species I have not yet identified, but it is one of a group that only ever have a single leaf.  This is most unusual for any plant!  But there are several in the family Gesneriaceae, to which both Streptocarpus (aka Cape Primrose) and Saintpaulias (aka African Violet, another easy house plant) belong.   What is more, the leaf that develops is a cotyledon, sometimes called a seed leaf, which develops directly from the embryo contained in the seed.  Almost every plant grows mature leaves as soon as it can.  Cotyledons are only there to give them a start, and soon wither away.

Streptocarpus leaves in general are a bit peculiar.  You can grow more plants from leaf cuttings.  This in itself is not all that rare, but usually you need a whole leaf.  With Streptocarpus, you only need part of a leaf, and multiple plants can grow from even that.  I have two lovely little potsful grown from two pieces of a single leaf that I took off a rather sickly plant earlier this ear.  It was its only healthy leaf.  Each pot now contains two or three separate plants, growing close together.  The original parts of leaves are also still there, bigger and healthier than they were.  After taking root, they carried on growing.

Streptocarpus cultivar grown from leaf cuttings in 2015.  Hayes, 19 October 2015.

It was a bit of a gamble, but it paid off.  The original plant is still alive, but only just.

There are plenty of deeply coloured varieties available, but I like the more delicate ones.

Fly Agaric

Amanita muscaria, Fly Agaric.  Beacon Wood Country Park, 8 October 2015.

It's fungus time!  You can see fungi all year round, but autumn is when they really proliferate.  And this post celebrates our most noticeable fungus (though not our commonest). 

These specimens of the Fly Agaric are in Beacon Wood Country Park, which contains a stretch of birch wood.  You can find Fly Agarics under several kinds of tree, but they do love birches, and this wood is full of them, dotted around singly and in groups. 

Here's a young one:

Young Amanita muscaria, Fly Agaric.  Beacon Wood Country Park, 8 October 2015.

The dots are part of a veil that encloses the young fruiting body, and gradually cracks and breaks up as the toadstool develops.  They may seem to be firmly attached but actually they can wash off in heavy rain, leaving a red and yellow cap that looks as though it might be something else until you get close.

Amanita muscaria, Fly Agaric.  Detail of the cap.  Beacon Wood Country Park, 8 October 2015.

Vivid!  Hallucinogenic!  And will make you quite ill if you consume it.  Apparently, if reindeer eat it you can drink their urine and not get such a bad effect, but I do not recommend this.  It is cruel to the reindeer.

Sharp Invertebrates

Volucella zonaria on an ivy bank.  Gates Green Road, Coney Hall, 2 October 2015.

These are just a couple of particularly sharp photos that my new camera provided for me.  The first is a large hoverfly, a hornet mimic, eating ivy pollen.  Banks of ivy like this provide the last big feast before the winter for both pollen and nectar lovers.  This hoverfly is going for pollen.  Look at the way her proboscis wraps the ivy's anther.

You don't see how furry these creatures are with the naked eye.  This one looks like a stripy teddy bear.

Garden Spider, Araneus diadematus.  West Wickham Common, 1 October 2015

This Garden Spider does not look like any kind of bear.  It's our commonest orb web spinning spider, and the females are quite large at this time of year.  Here, she is wrapping her prey.  The front legs are spinning it around on an axis formed by the thich nearly-vertical threads.  With one back leg she is guiding a spray of strands from her spinnerets to complete the wrapping.  These spiders always wrap very thoroughly.  The post office would be happy with the result.

EOS 5DS, a camera to enjoy.  Both of these were taken with my normal setup; hand-held with a 100mm macro lens and a ring flash.

Deer in Mist

Roe deer, Capreolus capreolus,  in a field between the High Elms estate and North End Lane.  3 October 2015.

I rarely take landscape views these days, but I do like mist.  It makes the world more mysterious and personal by hiding everything that's in the distance, and things tend to loom.  Big objects loom a lot.  This is a typical countryside scene, with massive pylons dominating farmland.  A small group of Roe Deer are running for the safety of some brush under the nearest pylon.

I could not get close to those deer.  Like nearly all wild creatures, they are wary of people.  At least my 100mm macro lens gives enough magnification that you can see them clearly in this shot:

Roe deer, Capreolus capreolus,  in a field between the High Elms estate and North End Lane.  3 October 2015.

I was following a badger track across a field of stubble towards a copse, and the deer emerged from behind the copse.  (I could be sure about it being a badger track because I found the sett in the copse, and on the far side was a latrine area which badgers use as a territory marker.)