09 Tuesday Dec 2025
Posted in fungi
≈ Comments Off on D is for Date waxcaps
Finding Date waxcaps fruiting on a local road verge on 15 October was, without a doubt, the highlight of 2025 as far as fungi finds go. What a treat they were, and, as with yesterday’s Choughs, completely unexpected, particularly in such an urban setting.
20 Friday Sep 2024
With the recent launch of its campaign #WaxcapWatch, the environment organisation Plantlife is asking for the public’s help to record waxcap fungi this autumn. As they state on their website:
Britain is home to some of the most important waxcap grasslands in the world. However many species are becoming rare and declining; they need identifying and protecting.
You don’t need to be a fungi expert to help out. The webpage provides all the instructions you need, including a link to an app you can use to record your finds, and a handy video on how to use the app. So, no excuses! Waxcaps are some of our most beautiful fungi and seeing these little gems growing in a field is a truly wonderful experience.
The waxcaps shown here are all Parrot waxcaps (Gliophorus psittacinus), and were found during a wander around one of Cardiff’s old cemeteries last week.
14 Friday Oct 2022
Yesterday saw me back on my old stomping grounds in north Cardiff and along the way I popped in briefly to the new section of Cathays Cemetery. Although both the old and new sections of this huge cemetery are recognised hotspots for fungi and enjoy SSSI designation, the council chooses to ignore recommendations for the site’s management and so I have noted that with each passing year the quantity and diversity of fungi has declined. Though I didn’t linger long yesterday (it’s depressing to see the sparsity where once there was abundance), I did manage to find a single Parrot waxcap, saved from the strimmer’s plastic blade by its location between two old gravestones, stunning in its solitary beauty. If only this Parrot could scream ‘Save us!’ … but would anyone be listening?
p.s. I have previously approached the council about their management of these places but, as is typical when I try to communicate reasonably with the various local authorities, their responses contain mostly excuses for their actions. They will not listen to the Parrot!
03 Thursday Nov 2016
Tags
Ballerina waxcap, Blackening waxcap, Fibrous waxcap, Golden waxcap, Hygrocybe, parrot waxcap, Persistent waxcap, Pink waxcap, Scarlet waxcap, Slimy waxcap, Snowy waxcap, waxcap
Waxcaps can be wavy, waxen, wanton, waterlogged, weathered, wee, weensy, wet, whimsical, winsome, wispy, withered, wing-like, willowy, windblown, wobbling, wonderful, worshipful, wordless, worshipped, wondrous, wonky, wraithlike, and wrinkly!
These beauties, and their friends and families, are displaying many of those characteristics right now at my local cemetery. They are the Blackening waxcap (Hygrocybe conica), Fibrous (Hygrocybe intermedia), Golden (Hygrocybe chlorophana), Parrot (Gliophorus psittacinus), Persistent (Hygrocybe acutoconica), Pink (Porpolomopsis calyptriformis), Scarlet (Hygrocybe coccinea), Slimy (Gliophorus irrigatus), and Snowy waxcap (Cuphophyllus virgineus).
01 Friday Jan 2016
Posted in fungi, nature, nature photography
≈ Comments Off on The waxcap of the meadows
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Though a very pretty and quite delicate shade of apricot, the Meadow waxcap is one of the less colourful waxcaps. Yet what it lacks in vibrancy it more than makes up for in the sculptural elegance of its shape, even more so as it ages. From a straight robust stem, its gills soar skywards, like a sharp-edged version of the fluting on a Greek temple column, and the edge of its cap undulates like the rolling of the ocean waves.
Hygrocybe (‘watery head’) pratensis (‘of meadows’) is one of the larger mushrooms in the waxcap family and is also more tolerant of fertilisers than most, so is a relatively common find in Britain and Europe on mown grassland and cropped pastures where the soil tends towards the acidic. It can also be found growing in woodland areas in northern Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and in both South and North America – in the latter, it is more commonly known as the butter meadowcap or the salmon waxy cap.
14 Monday Dec 2015
Posted in autumn, fungi, nature, nature photography
Tags
autumn, cemetery, fungi, fungus, parrot toadstool, parrot waxcap, waxcap
When it’s a waxcap, of course. Still none the wiser? Well, meet Gliophorus psittacinus (the fungus formerly known as Hygrocybe psittacina), the gorgeous little Parrot waxcap or toadstool.
Latin names are a bit of a mouthful but both gliophorus and hygrocybe (tissue carrying / watery head) refer to the tendency for all waxcaps to look and feel quite slimy. Psittacinus is Latin for parrot, and it’s easy to see where this little fungus gets that name – it’s just as colourful as any parrot you’ll ever see, ranging in colour from green, yellow and orange through to pink, purple and brown. Bright green seems to be its predominant hue when young, then the other colours are more easily seen as the green slime washes off its cap.
Like all waxcaps it can be found in summer and autumn in grassy areas that have received no artificial fertilisers for 30 years or more, so look for it on roadside verges, in cropped paddocks and in older cemeteries, often in mossy areas. In Britain, it’s more likely to be found in the western counties and in Wales, and it also grows in the cooler parts of mainland Europe and in parts of North America.
