skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Blue skies and warm sunny weather in Weardale this weekend. Here are a few of the sights from a walk along the banks of the river Wear downstream from Wolsingham.
Blackthorn in full bloom everywhere.
Elm flowering is long finished, now the clusters of seeds are developing
Dry weather in the dale, so the water level in the river has dropped rapidly, leaving shallow pools full of trapped fish.
Great tit singing
Grey wagtails are most often seen at the water's edge, but this cock bird was perched in a riverbank tree
A very confiding hedge sparrow. I suspect its was reluctant to fly because its nest was somewhere close, though I failed to find it.
Herb robert coming into flower. This was a nutrient-starved plant rooted in a dead tree and the stress may account for those vivid red leaves
Plenty of ripe ivy berries, particularly valuable food for spring migrants.
Lambs growing fast ..... and very lively
The best find of the day, a morel Morchella esculenta. The sandy silt near the river bank seems to suit these fungi, though they don't appear very often.
Nuthatch, very vociferous at this time of year.
A well-worn peacock butterfly, refuelling on butterbur nectar after a long hibernation
So warm that sheep were looking for somewhere shady to rest by mid-morning
Sycamore buds are exceptionally beautiful when they swell, elongate and begin to burst at this time of year
It was been an exceptional year for toothwort, the parasite that gains all its nutrients from the roots of hazel. Must have seen well over 100 flower spikes.
Click here for more information on this unusual flowering plant that is completely lacking in chlorophyll.
The tiny-flowered ivy-leaved speedwell Veronica hederifolia coming into flower
Willow warblers singing all along the riverbank
Wood sorrel coming into bloom
.
... and finally, a very noisy singing wren.
Thursday's Guardian County Diary is about scarlet elf cup fungus Sarcoscypha austriaca, a spring-fruiting fungus that seems to be having a very good season this year, judging from the number of photographs of it that are appearing on Twitter at the moment.
These two examples were amongst many opening on a south-facing embankment of the old railway line at Mickleton in Teesdale. It seems to thrive in this sunny spot, growing amongst a layer of fallen twigs, last year's nettle and hogweed stems and a carpet of moss. Many of the surrounding twigs were infected with green elf cup fungus Chlorosplenium aeruginascens, which stains the wood turquoise.
The scarlet cups are angled towards the sunlight and seem to act as parabolic reflectors, concentrating the sun's warm over their surface, where thousands of microscopic sporangia are embedded. When they're ripe they fire their spores out like pop-guns, shooting them into the airstream. In this example a small spider was taking advantage of the shelter and warmth.
Scarlet elf cup grows on rotting twigs. This example was about the size of a golf tee.
Green elf cup doesn't produce its infructescences very often, but the turquoise staining of wood that's infected with the fungus gives away its presence. Wood that's stained by the fungus has been used for decorative Tunbridge Ware
The other spring-fruiting fungus that sometimes appears locally, especially in the silty soil along some stretches of the river Wear in Weardale, is the morel Morchella esculenta, which is highly prized by gourmets. This is a young specimen ...
... but these two are probably past their best. Those convolutions in the cap fill with grit, so they need thorough washing before cooking. The peak time for morels here is at about the same time that butterbur leaves begin to expand. It has a long-standing reputation for appearing on sites where the ground has been burnt and old accounts say that in Germany woodlands were sometimes set on fire (illegally) to encourage its growth.
There are several species of Morchella here that are less common than the morel. I'm pretty sure this one is the semifree morel Morchella semilibera (formally known as Mitrophora libera) which has a disproportionately small cap.
A research paper published in 2010 (click here to view) provided some fascinating evidence that climate change was having an effect on spring-fruiting fungi in the UK and in north-west Europe, with milder winters leading to earlier appearance of these toadstools.
At this time of year this intriguing toadstool, the morel Morchella esculenta, regularly appears along the banks of the river Wear in Weardale, sometimes in large numbers. This is the only one we've found this year, but maybe the cold weather is holding them back. That honeycomb-shaped cap makes it instantly recognisable as a morel and these toadstools are highly prized by those who like to eat wild fungi, although you need to be careful to remove the grit, insects and assorted other debris that collects in those cavities - and cooking is also essential to render this species edible. I have to admit I'm a coward when it comes to exploring the culinary qualities of wild toadstools and with this species, distinctive though it is, there is a possibility of making a fatal mistake.....
Just along the river bank from the specimen above, on the edge of a pine plantation, we found this false morel Gyromitra esculenta, which is a totally different proposition. When fully grown it has a short stalk like a morel and that convoluted cap looks superficially like the morel's honeycombed structure - but about one in seven people who mistakenly eat the false morel become acutely ill die from symptoms similar to death cap poisoning. Apparently some people have a digestive system that's capable to harmlessly breaking down the toxin and can eat them with impunity but the only way to find our if your liver might survive the experience seems to be to indulge in the mycological equivalent of Russian roulette. The fungus is said to be edible if it's dried or soaked to remove the toxin ............. but I think I'll stick with cultivated mushrooms.
Posts
