Fluted Birdsnest Fungus, Cyathus striatusCoralroot fungus on woodchip … like diving into a minuscule ocean … Common Birdsnest Fungi on Woodchip … aren’t they beautiful? Only millimetres across. The yellow circles are the same fungi, not yet opened.A few feet above the fungi, a Sorbus doing its autumnal thing with leaves and fruits
How’s that for an amazing Rhododendron bush?Kew – Pollen Cones of Austrian PineKew – glorious blue flower spike … a whole meadow’s worth of themKew’s Daisy Lawn with Canada Geese
Yes, you couldn’t make it up or improve it with Photoshop, the colours came out like this straight from the camera. The tree is a Red Maple, Acer rubrum, in fact the one planted in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales.Get that for October! Scilla madeirensis in Kew’s Alpine House. Guess you could translate that as the Madeira Squill if you wanted to. The whole bush was this “absolutely fabulous” colour. Euonymus alatus ‘Compactus’Sunny colours in the Alpine House: Eschscholzia californicaThe astounding copper-red of the Northern Pin Oak of New England, Quercus ellipsoidalisAnd for a warm smile to last through the winter, how about these?
Witch Hazel, HamamelisGolden Lotus Banana, a relative of the edible banana plant, and enough like a sacred lotus for it to be also sacred in (Chinese) BuddhismKew’s Avenue with flowering cherry sentinelsA Strelitzia in the Temperate HousePeople were buzzing around Kew’s Magnolia Grove like entranced bees drunk on nectar. They just couldn’t leave.
The raked gravel “sea”, hand-picked rocks, tiny bridges, marvellously-pruned trees and bushes, and subtle choices of colours and textures (not to mention the monumental gateway) all go to make up the Japanese ideal of garden landscape beauty.
Redlead Roundhead, Stropharia aurantiaca: once a rare species, now sometimes all over the woodchip under trees in parks.
Chicken of the Woods Laetiporus sulphureus on Red Oak. It’s very good to eat … if you can reach it!
Hare’s Foot Inkcap, Coprinus lagopusBonnet mushrooms, Mycena sp. Hundreds of these delicate little fungi on the woodchip under almost every tree.
A yellow Brittlegill, Russula cf farinipes
A grey Brittlegill, Russula; maybe R. cyanoxantha or R. brunnoviolacea
Bolete under Caucasian Fir, cf Slippery Jack Suillus luteus
Wrinkled Club, Clavulina rugosa, a bit unusualBrown cap, lilac gills … Wood Blewit, Lepista nuda. Delicious, if you can find them somewhere you’re allowed to pick them!
Young Blewits: now that’s an amazing colour! (absolutely no enhancement of any kind)
Clouded Funnel, Clitocybe nebularis: young specimens with cap still domed (that was confusing!), but top (see next photo) distinctively cloudy. Gills crowded and decurrent, white.
Young Clouded Funnels. Larger specimens develop a flattened or slightly funnel-shaped cap, and the gills become much more obviously decurrent.
Each cup is no bigger than your little fingernail. The cups grow on damp compost which the workers in Kew Gardens heap thickly under the trees. The “eggs” are called Peridioles, and they’re basically little bags of spores; they are splashed out of the cups by rain and the spores can then germinate. The family is the Nidulariaceae, which surprisingly is part of the Agaricales (normal-looking Basidiomycete mushrooms). species is the Common Bird’s Nest, Crucibulum laeve. One of the cups is still developing and is covered by a membrane. Yep, a different Bird’s Nest Fungus with a larger, greyer, frilly cup. This seems to be the Field Bird’s Nest, Cyathus olla.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
