25 Friday Nov 2022
Posted in fungi
Here’s a teeny tiny bonnet mushroom for this week’s #FungiFriday, about the right size for a fairy to wear, one of those miniscule Mycena species you find growing amongst the moss on a tree in a damp woodland.
06 Friday Nov 2020
It’s almost a year since I published the post Groovy bonnets (on 27 November 2019), about a troop of Grooved bonnet fungi (Mycena polygramma) that was growing on a tree in the green space around a local church.
Since then, sadly, the tree they were growing on has mostly gone, blown down in one of our winter storms early this year – now, only the stump remains.
But the fungi were still there, living silently unseen beneath the surface, until now, when they are fruiting again.
And these gorgeous fungi are supporting other life – spot the millipede amongst the gills in my second photo.
29 Tuesday Nov 2016
As mushroom expert Michael Kuo writes, Mycena fungi are ‘some of the most beautiful and elegant mushrooms on earth’ but, due to their often tiny size, they’re frequently overlooked. His advice is that we should all slow down and take the time to appreciate the beauty of small things. And I couldn’t agree more!
I think you can easily see why the Mycenoid fungi usually have a common name that includes the word bonnet: that cap shape is a dead giveaway. And their common names are often delightful, sometimes intriguing: Pinkedge bonnet, Frosty bonnet, Snapping bonnet, Pelargonium bonnet, Bleeding bonnet, Ferny bonnet, Nitrous bonnet, Vulgar bonnet and Cryptic bonnet, to name just a few. Like nearly all fungi, the Mycenoids can be difficult to identify and I don’t know the names of all of those in my photographs but I do think they’re all rather lovely.
earthstar 
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