Today we went with Gaynor and Tim met up with Susan and Simon. A walk which usually takes us a couple of hours lasted well over three hours as we ambled along, sharing finds and backtracking to look at something we'd missed. But that made it all the more enjoyable.
The range of fungi on show was wide and varied in colour, size and edibility. Here are just a few of those we saw.
Perhaps Susan would be kind enough to comment on the photos below...
More on the walk to follow....
7 comments:
The bottom photos are of a female parasitic ichneumon wasp Dolichomitus sp drilling a hole in a log and depositing an egg in a grub that she has detected inside the log. Her ovipositor (egg laying tube) is in 5 sections. Two sections are a protective sheath that she points upwards while she uses the ovipositor proper to drill down into the wood. The three sections of the ovipositor proper are metal tipped and she controls them so that they move up and down like a saw. She was astonishingly quick at piercing the wood right up to her tail -- a distance of about 3cm using a 'tool' that is maybe 0.5mm in diameter.
The cep Simon is picking in the photo further up weighed 600g btw. I've cooked them up and they had hardly any fly maggots.
I think I could identify the cep, and is that a shaggy ink-cap? Everything else has a sign over it saying "don't eat me!"
I learned such a lot, most of which I've forgotten! Great photographs. We haven't looked at ours yet.
However, I think I could identify the Cep and the orange peel fungus. We had a lovely time in excellent company and couldn't believe just how long we'd been walking.
The outing was rounded off with an excellent cup of tea and more CAKE... ;o)
Thank you, Susan, for such a comprehensive explanation. We all learnt so much yesterday but sadly, as Gaynor says, the chances of retaining much of it are slim! I do, however, now know how to tell a barren strawberry from the usual wild strawberry even outside fruiting season!
Thanks to our fellow walkers for a really enjoyable, relaxing walk! And that cuppa was most welcome, Simon and Susan!
That wasp is so well camoflarrrrged...
that I'm blessed if I can see it!!
Are you allowed to gather mushrooms on a Friday in the Tours-Preuilly?
I thought it was only w/ends...
I would have picked any Shaggies and that young Parasol...
the Shaggies make an excellent vegetarian "chicken" risotto...
you just need a few that are just on the turn [not as far gone as this one] to add a bit of "pink meat" to the dish.
The Parasol would have opened happily at home if picked with its stalk intact and stuck in a vase of water at home for 24hrs.
What a lovely walk you had...
Tim: ahem, you are quite right, but since every single person in the forest was clearly mushroom foraging...Friday afternoon is close enough to the weekend...
And the Itchy-Newman pictures have now appeared at the bottom of the post...
so it all makes sense...
last night the post finished at the last mushrooms and I spent an age squinting at the screen trying to see the little blighter...
who, of course, wasn't in the last two pictures I could seeeeeee!
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