Growing Secretly

I used to find this time of year rather depressing – the realisation that summer is over, the days are getting shorter, the temperature is getting cooler and everything is dying around you. 

The birds are not singing quite as loud – indeed many have disappeared – off to warmer parts of the world and there is that constant damp smell in the air. Apart from weeds there doesn’t seem to be much new growth in the garden.

In reality of course the last point is not true. Things do grow at this time of year, but they do so in secret. Fungi of all sorts seek out dark hidden places and for a few weeks grow and thrive. A visit to  a local woodland last week reminded me of just how many different sorts of fungi there are.

Accompanied by my good friend Tony Leech with Mary, Molly and Tom, we went in search of some fungi. To be honest I wasn’t very hopeful – after the terribly dry summer we have had I felt we weren’t going to see very much. The difference is, or course, they were there but much smaller than in previous years. Had I not been accompanied by sharp eyed friends, I might have missed many of them.

If it’s all the same to you, I won’t show my ignorance by trying to name them all. I would only get most of them wrong. God bless Mary and her mobile phone, which named many of them.

Tony, of course recognised and knew all of them – usually by their Latin names! Ah well, If only I’d paid more attention to my Latin teacher.

Maybe just the sight of them will be for you, like it is for me, a little secret pleasure. 

My thanks to Dr Tony Leech for taking us on the foray – to Mary Groombridge for many of the pictures and for recording explanations and to my readers for putting up with the undoubted typing errors.

See you next week.