A field of mushrooms near Windy Nook , Gateshead

On a lunchtime stroll from work (QE Hospital, Gateshead) I found an open access field covered in clusters of at least 4 different mushrooms.

Common Inkcaps (Coprinus atramentaria). This is the one all the books warn about. Technically it is edible, but if you have any trace of alcohol in your system this muchroom will cause very unpleasant symptoms. It inhibits your body's ability to deal with alcohol.

No need to worry though, the field was also covered in another of the Coprinus family, the Shaggy Inkcap (C. Comatus). Here pictured in all stages of growth, from the small white egg shapped excellent edible younger specimens, to the taller, black, inky older ones.

There were also many patches of 2 other species that need to be identified. That'll be for tomorrow lunch time!

Update: One of the species I didn't recognize appears to be Field Blewit, Lepista saeva.  Will check spore print colour tonight, and head back to collect the young ones tomorrow to be made into Chicken and Blewit pie, recpie curtesy of Rogers Mushrooms

Countryside walks: Derwent bridge to Chopwell Woods

Just out of Rolands Gill on the Derwent Walk I crossed the viaduct and headed left on a public footpath up into Scaife's Wood. Initially a a mono culture of adolescent Beech trees without any sign of fungi. Mature Pine trees in the south eastern corner of the woods hosting Sulfur Tuft, Hypholoma fasciculare (see photo) and a rotting Bolete. (This was worrying as edible Boletes were the object of the walk! Am I searching for them too late in the year?)

Following the footpath through Middle Friarside, Cypress trees were identified next to prefectly ripe elderberries and sour blackberries. (Is the blackberry season over?). Crossing the road at Lintzford and along rejoining the Red Kite Trail, the Hawthorn hedge turned to Blackthorn. The first frost of the year hasn't happened yet so it isn't yet time to harvest the slows, but some of the Blackthorn were covered large, ripe, black sloes(see photo), so it felt only polite to pick half a kg or so to flavour a bottle of gin.

I left the the footpath as it rose up slightly to Chopwell Woods to zig-zag amongst the trees to search for edible mushrooms. Saw more rotten yellow pored Boletes beneath pine trees and an unidentified violet mushroom with gills which didn't look like an Amethyst Deciever (see photo). As I went back to the clearing where we'd previously identified a Deathcap mushroom I had a closer look. There was a good selection of Deathcap-like mushrooms of all ages. On closer inspection of these, diagnostic features became apparent: the slight yellow colour throughout, a consistantly present remenant of universtal veil on accross the cap (remenisent of that on Fly Agaric but with a brown tinge); abscence of an tinge of olive green on any of the the caps; closer morphology to to Roger Phillips photos of this mushroom, I became convinced that infact they weren't Deathcaps, Amantia Muscaria but False Deatcaps, Amanita Citrina. Not mushrooms I feel like getting near to, but it's nice to get a little more experience of the Amanita genus.

After 4 hours of walking it was time to give up so I started to head out of the woods without having seen many mushrooms at all. Then on the grass about 50m ahead I could see a perfect bell shaped mushroom which turned out to be a Shaggy Inkcup, Coprinus comatus. The sloes picked at Lintzford turned out to be the find of the day!

Animals spotted: Grey Squirrel, Magpie, Raven, Wood Pigeon and Llamas!