Waxcaps in Auckland park, Bishop Auckland

 

This has been the best autumn for waxcap toadstools that I can recall here in County Durham. This very mild, and lately very wet, November seems to have suited them perfectly.

I found these in ancient, unimproved calcareous grassland in Auckland park, Bishop Auckland this morning. I suspect that the one above and the two below might be the scarlet waxcap Hygrocybe coccinea, whilst the bottom two photos, with yellow gills, could be crimson waxcap Hygrocybe punicea, though it is hard to be sure. 

These exquisite little toadstools often seem to be associated with meadow ant nests in the park, which could have more to do with soil drainage than directly with ants. They toadstools are brittle and many are knocked over and broken by grazing animals.

Parasols

These fine specimens of parasol mushroom Macrolepiota procera are currently at their best in Auckland Park, Bishop Auckland. A common species, but one of the most elegant.

Bishop Auckland's magnificent Spanish chestnuts

Some more pictures of the wonderful Spanish chestnuts Castanea sativa in Auckland Park, Bishop Auckland, County Durham that were described in the Guardian Country Diary yesterday.

Not dead yet! Still has living branches that will sprout leaves in spring.

There's a small bird-sown holly tree growing amongst the branches of this one.

The largest bole of a venerable but healthy tree. Spanish chestnuts can live for 400 years.

Winter buds





Flowers and foliage.



Shiny, edible seeds with spiny husks.

Beautiful Bark

Auckland Park, in Bishop Auckland in County Durham, has a fine collection of venerable trees with beautiful bark patterns. 

Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna

Fluted trunk on an old hawthorn ....

.... with an elegant twist

Grey poplar Populus alba. The flat surfaces, between the fissures, are covered with diamond-shaped scars that look as though the bark has been hit with a pick, which is most evident on young trees like the one you can see by clicking here.

The old grey poplars have the most deeply fissured bark of any trees in the park ....

.... with splits so deep that they resemble crevasses 

Young silver birch bark peels away in thin layers (click here for a picture) but as it ages the bark splits and forms flaky plates ...... 

...... like this

Sweet chestnut Castanea sativa, with a bark pattern that resembles raised branching fibres ...

... with deep crevices where all manner of small invertebrates can spend the winter

Meadow ant metropolis

The undisturbed grassland in glades in the hawthorn scrub in Auckland Castle Park, at Bishop Auckland in Co. Durham, is home to an astonishing collection of meadow ant nests. There must be about 200 of these domed nests on the sunny south facing slope, with many more scattered throughout the park.

At the time of writing they are dormant but at the peak of activity in summer each is home to tens of thousands of ants and - like icebergs - there is more of the colony below ground than above.

There are so many that they are easily visible in satellite imagery. This is a screen grab from Google Earth. Double click on the image to enlarge it, then look for the two groups of pale dots across the centre of the image, just south of the footpath that snakes across the map.

This enormous concentration of ant nests makes it a perfect feeding site for green woodpeckers, which are ant-feeding specialists. I can't think of a single time when we've visited when I haven't seen or heard one (though I've yet to get a decent photograph!).

One curious feature of the ant metropolis is that every nest is capped in winter with a single species of moss - neat feather moss Pseudoscleropodium purum. 

When the grasses die down in winter the vibrant green moss has a chance to thrive in its place in the sun, surrounded by dead grass.

There's plenty of moisture for most of the winter months but the moss's enduring success in this habitat, which can at times be very dry in such a sunny, south facing site, may be due to the arrangement of the moss leaves.

The leaves are arranged like a spiral whorl of overlapping cupped hands around the long axis and the 'cups' hold water

You can see the effect here - when the moss is moist it has this very shiny, inflated appearance. Under the microscope you can actually see water trapped under the leaves,

The sweet chestnut that refuses to die....

Auckland park, in Bishop Auckland, has an interesting collection of old trees and these venerable sweet chestnuts are amongst the finest.

Some, like this one, are in the prime of life and produced a very heavy crop of chestnuts this year. 

There are four mature trees that were planted in a line beside a small stream. The ground under them is covered in a thick layer of their serrated leaves, spiny fruit husks and nuts that will keep the squirrels well fed for weeks to come.

The low-angle late autumn sunshine this morning showed off their fissured bark beautifully. 

One of the four has been dying for the thirty five years that I've known it. It has shed most of its branches, much of its bark, has been attacked by wood boring beetles and fungi .....

... and yet every year it sprouts new growth, refusing to die. There could be decades of life left in it yet, unless the roots finally rot and it's blown over by a gale and ......

...........that would be a pity, because I'd really miss this gnarled old trunk. It's one of the park's characters.

Fog and Fungi

A while back I posted about threats to the future of the Bishop of Durham's deer park at Auckland Park, in Bishop Auckland in County Durham. Thankfully these seem to have abated, much to the relief of all those who love the place. It's one of our favourite Sunday morning walks - even in the fog.

The park is at its best in autumn ....

.... especially when fog adds a touch of liquid magic to the spiders' webs.

I think it was Oliver Rackham, the noted tree and woodland expert, who once remarked that the only thing more useful to wildlife than a live tree was a dead tree. He was referring to the vast range of organisms - invertebrates, fungi, etc. - that live in or on the dead wood during a tree's protracted afterlife. Whoever manages the park at Bishop Auckland leaves plenty of dead wood for the benefit of organisms that thrive on it - like these tiers of bracket fungi (Ganoderma sp. I think) in the hollow trunk of this dead beech.

Some of the living beeches are under attack by honey fungus and their days are numbered - but there are also plenty of healthy trees and some replanting.

The stumps of old sweet chestnuts host these developing puffballs.

Sycamore, with the black spots of Rhytisma acerinum on the leaf blade.

Some of the living trees have magnificent rings of toadstools around their bases - I guess that these are a mycorrhizal species, that exist in a mutually beneficial association with the trees.

Not sure what these are, on a decaying beech stump. During the prolonged afterlife of the dead trees a whole succession of toadstools appear, some for just a few days.