Foxholes Fungus Foray

Pop-up Fungus Foray at Foxholes, 30 October 2022

At this time of year, fungi pop up like, well, mushrooms – and so do Field Club walks! Our second pop-up walk of the winter season was at Foxholes, a BBOWT reserve near Bruern, which is always worth a visit at this time of year for fungi.

Two weeks earlier, some of us had been to Snelsmore Common with Peter Creed for our annual Club fungus foray. (The report is here.) We always value Peter’s expert leadership and encyclopaedic knowledge on these trips. It’s much more challenging to try and remember what we have learnt from him, backed up with a field guide, when we’re out on our own, but just as enjoyable in its own way.

Eleven of us met to take on the challenge. The first species that we encountered was quite easy to identify – huge parasol mushrooms which grow each year in a field near the entrance to the reserve. Once in the woodland, things got much more complicated, and out came the books. In each case, we were looking at the colour of the cap, stem and gills or pores, where it was most likely to grow, and how common it was. All that took time.

We were pretty confident in identifying the common puffballs, butter caps and rosy bonnets, which are quite distinctive, and the unmistakable magpie inkcaps. The field guide helped us with the clumps of squelchy-looking black/brown fungi, clearly well past their best: in each case (cap, stem and gills) the description ended with the words “becoming black”, so our vote went to the blackening brittlegill. On the other hand, it might have been something else!

Another eye-catching specimen was identified (fairly confidently) as a red-cracking bolete, and we were all pleased to find some fly agarics.

On our way back, we looked for grassland fungi. There were no devil’s fingers this time round, but we (probably) found yellow fieldcaps and slimy waxcaps – well, maybe, but they were very slimy, and some magic mushrooms. Apologies to all those LBMs (little brown mushrooms) which we didn’t have the time or skill (or, let’s be honest, the inclination) to look up.

Many thanks to Julia Reid for suggesting and organising this pop-up walk.

A full list of the fungi we identified can be found here.

Sue Morton, 6 November 2022

Note: all the identifications in the pictures are very tentative!