Fungi Love the Rainy Weather

It has been raining most of the day, but really started to pour just as Crafty Green Boyfriend and I set out on our lunchtime walk round Corstorphine Hill.

Here are just some of the wonderful fungi we saw around the hill

Dead Men's Fingers- I think these are the first of this species I've seen, they are well named and have a gruesome resemblance to their namesakes.

Stinkhorn - I've never seen such a fine specimen of a stinkhorn, another well named species as it stinks like an open sewer and the smell seems to pervade the whole area around the stinkhorn. Flies are drawn to the smell and then eat the spore bearing mucus on top of the fungus.

Another aptly named fungus is this coral fungus

giant polypore - this isn't a particularly good photo of the fungus as it's mostly hidden by the surrounding vegetation, but the fungi covers a lot of ground around the tree and these particular fruiting bodies have grown up very recently, there are older fruiting bodies on the other side of the tree.

I think these are amethyst deceivers, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. (Edited to add, I've just been told they are in fact lilac bell caps).

If you're in Edinburgh on Sunday, you may be interested in going along to the Fungus Foray on Corstorphine Hill, which will be lead by David Adamson of Edinburgh Natural History Society, starting at 2pm (see the Facebook event for more details).

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