These Scarlet waxcaps (Hygrocybe coccinea) are the little gems I was hoping to find during my last visit to Cardiff’s Cathays Cemetery a couple of weeks ago but they hadn’t yet popped their little gorgeous heads up through the mossy grass.
This week some had, though many more were still just tiny scarlet bumps about to burst through.
Sadly, Cardiff Council workers were in the middle of cutting the grass at the cemetery so the chances of these, and any other waxcaps I didn’t manage to spot, surviving are about zero.
The cemetery is a SSSI precisely because of its rare waxcaps, and I know from speaking to a local ecologist that the Council has been given information on how they should be managing the cemetery to conserve and enhance the waxcap population. Sadly, like so many councils in the UK, they choose to destroy the environment rather than protect it.
