Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Common Puffball, Lycoperdon perlatum, is edible when young, as in the one above, growing on grassland near trees on the south bank of Skelton Lake. The pyramidal warts fall away as the puffball changes colour from white to ochre brown, leaving a faint net-like pattern.
These two were growing within a few feet of each other with a third nearby.
The fibrous scales on this small mushroom resemble those of the Blushing Wood Mushroom, Agaricus silvaticus, a common species that some writers say is good to eat, but there are similar-looking species that aren’t, so I won’t be giving it a try.
The alder is the nearest that we get to mangroves as it produces adventitious roots above ground which enable it to grow in very wet ground, even at the water’s edge. These female woody ‘cones’ are ripening and will attract seed-eating birds such as redpolls and siskins.
I’m struggling to identify this polypore bracket fungus but I’m going for Smoky Bracket, Bjerkandera adusta, a common fungus on the dead wood of deciduous trees. Having said that, this sawn-off poplar hasn’t quite given up the ghost: it’s putting out new green shoots from epicormic buds beneath the bark.
With bracket fungi, it’s important to know what species of tree they are growing on. This is poplar, which has distinctive diamond-shaped lenticels (right), so another possibility is that this is the Poplar Bracket, Oxyporus populinus.
Rotate the stalk of hard rush, Juncus inflexus, between your fingers and you’ll feel the ridges. The similar-looking soft rush feels smooth. There’s a filling of white fleecy pith in these rushes; in soft rush it’s continuous and the pith was collected to make the wick of rush lights and candles. The pith in hard rush is interrupted.
The oaks at Skelton Lake have long-stalked acorns so, as the stalk botanically is the peduncle, these are common oaks, also known as pedunculate oak.
The old oak apple is a gall caused by the gall wasp Biorhiza pallida. The larvae develop inside the corky gall, so the holes are probably where the winged adult gall wasps have emerged during the summer but they might also be where parasitic gall wasps that feed on the Biorhiza larvae have emerged. There are also inquilines, insects that use the gall for the development of their larvae without preying on the original occupants.
When the Biorhiza wasps emerge in the summer, the females lay their eggs on the roots of the oak and an all-female generation of wingless gall wasps will emerge in winter about 18 months later. These females emerge climb up to lay their eggs in the leaf buds of the oak and it’s the leaf buds which develop into oak apples.
Rough-stalked feather-moss, Brachythecium rutabulum, is a common moss on wood and rocks. It also grows in grassland and can be considered a weed in lawns. I’ve been raking and scarifying our back lawn in preparation for the winter and this looks like the moss that I was raking up. I filled a large trug with moss and dead grass.
Flowers by Skelton Lakes motorway services, near Leeds. The chamomile and sowthistle may officially be weeds but they work well alongside the prairie-style planting. The gorse at the edge of the woodland is full bloom.
“You’ve got a good day for it!”
The anglers don’t agree with me: “It’s terrible weather for fishing!”
But Skelton Lake is a great place for a muddy stroll on a dull October morning; at the motorway services, a family are getting their children to change into wellies.
We’re here to take photographs of autumn colour, alder cones, the flowers in the wild flower beds by the services, which itself has a green roof. Rather than put this morning’s photographs in a slide-show style gallery, I’m putting them into an e-pub publication. I’ve only got as far as the cover so far, but I’m learning as I go along.
The geese look haughtily at us and decide to move on but, as I crouch down to attempt to photograph them, the hens rush towards us, so enthusiastically that I narrowly avoid one of them pecking at the lens of my iPhone.
But they soon realise that we haven’t brought any corn with us and return to their continuing soap opera of sorting out the pecking order of the flock with a jab, flutter and squawk.
Losing your way in the woods? My latest homemade birthday card.
YouTube version.
