In the shadows of the verge by the lane grow the mysteriously fungi. Many of them I don’t know the names of, as unless they’re either brightly coloured, or very toxic, I tend not to pay their names very much attention. And so it is with this little shroom.
Looking down on it (and a smaller friend next to it) it looks like a little flying saucer – domed slightly in the middle of the creamy grey cap, with the centre blushing brown. The edges – which we can tell are slightly frilled, even from above – pale to white.
The star of this shot has a fingernail sized bite out of the edge of it – a creature of some kind has had their lunch already.
Light falls from the left onto the pair of them, highlighting the slightly shiny nature of the surface. But the woodland floor below is in shadow, carpeted with dark rust leaves and decaying sticks.
The saprotrophic nature of many fungi (of which I think this is one – I think this is a Bonnet of some kind) means that all those leaves are decaying along with the help of the mushroom’s mycelium, which reaches its tiny tendrils into the leaf litter and detritus below. The bit we see on the surface – the mushroom – is just the fruiting body. Like apples on a tree
Soft of Sight Photography 