CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

  Chicken of the woods Laetiporus sulphureus , growing on a decaying oak trunk in Backstone bank wood in Weardale’s Tunstall valley. This is...

  When I first became seriously interested in natural history, about 60 years ago, the  Wayside and Woodland series  of nature guides , publ...

  The curse of the black spot! Tar spot fungus  Rhytisma acerinum , that disfigures sycamore leaves in summer, continues to develop on its d...

  Autumn is the main toadstool season but some hardy fungi produce theirs in the depths of winter, even during periods of frost and snow. Th...

  These caramel-coloured larch boletes  Suillus grevillei  began to appear around the roots of larch trees in the Deerness valley this week....

 For the fourth time in a little over two years this old sycamore stump has produced a magnificent display of dryad's saddle Cerioporus ...

These strange white sheaths around the stems of grasses are the spore-producing tissue of the fungus known as choke Epichloe typhina . It...

  We found these magnificent shaggy scalycaps Pholiota squarrosa growing around the base of a mature ash tree in Auckland park, Bishop Auck...

  This summer there have been some spectacular local outbreaks of pocket plum disease, affecting sloes on blackthorn on the Durham coast nea...

  Three late-winter fungi that have been very conspicuous here this month.  Scarlet elf cup Sarcoscypha austiaca . Always a joy to find, esp...

  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...

The end of three weeks of Coronavirus lockdown early morning walks around the same route. After a slow start, when spring seemed reluctant t...