Fabulous Fungi in Unexpected Places

 Yesterday I met with a fellow member of Edinburgh Natural History Society for a socially distanced walk round Cameron Toll and Kings Buildings to look for fungi. That's right, a shopping centre and a University campus! I studied at Kings Buildings when I did my Botany Degree (though you can no longer study Botany there, it's all Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and genetics, which are all good, but where are people supposed to learn about actual plants?). So I knew that the campus was a nature rich area but I had no idea about the wealth of nature around the shopping centre and was surprised by how many fungi we found. 

Unfortunately my photos aren't very good, but the highlights of the Kings Building Campus included:

upright coral fungus 

earthstars (probably collared earthstars) 

Wrinkled Club 

lots of these fungi, which I think are some sort of waxcap 

these pretty little things, which we think are porcelain fungi (sorry for the poor photo)

and these lovely bright orange fungi which may be orange wax caps

 

(the broken fungus at the front of the photo was already broken but conveniently gives a view of the gills!)

Under the trees around  the shopping centre (and the reason we were doing this walk) we saw birds nest fungi! Unfortunately the 'eggs' had fallen out of the fungi and all that was left was the 'nest' 

 

I have long wanted to see this species of fungus and it's amazing to see it in such a built up place! I was also surprised by how tiny this species is! You can see a photo of the birds nest fungus complete with eggs over on the Woodland Trust site here.