Mushrooms of 2011

For me 2011 was the year of the mushroom, well photography wise anyway.
I managed to find and photograph quite a few different species of fungi.
We didn’t really have to try that hard to find them, we had a wet end of summer and a super mild autumn so the mushrooms were abundant.

I enjoy Macro , close up photography so mushrooms are great to photograph with all the detail they have.  I have always wanted to photograph a Fly Agaric, but every time I found one someone had kicked it over or it had been eaten by a slug.   We visited a local woods and found quite a few Fly Agaric’s in good condition.

Fly Agaric – Berserker Mushroom

Modern scholars believe certain examples of berserker rage to have been induced voluntarily by the consumption of drugs such as the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly Amanita.

I also managed to grab a photo of a Death Cap, Amanita phalloides
A very appropriate common name for this species. Eating one of these will very likely be fatal if hospital treatment is not sought. Even then, survival is far from certain. There is no antidote.

it is estimated that 30 grams (1 oz), or half a cap, of this mushroom is enough to kill a human.

Another find was this Cauliflower mushroom (below)

Perfectly lit by the light coming though the trees of the Forest of Dean

 

Another interesting mushroom to photograph are the Shaggy ink Caps. (photographed just off a golf course, we looked a bit weird photographing these monsters while golfers walked onto the next hole.)

The Shaggy Ink caps start to melt once they have become full size, they produce a black slime like tar that melts slowly off the mushroom. In the photo below you can see some of the slime blowing in the wind.

 

Mushroom photos from 2011

 

 

Hope you enjoyed my mushroom photos from 2011, Please leave a comment