The Monthly Mushroom: Candlesnuff Fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon)
by Jasper Sharp, 20 February, 2018, 1 comments
February isn’t, generally speaking, the most conducive time of year to go roaming the woods or immerse yourself in the great outdoors. With its cold rains, claggy mud, bare trees, muted colours and short daylight hours, it is a month marked by dormancy for many, although still one in which the early green shoots and nascent buds are at least appearing to signal some sort of an end to another grey and dreary English winter.
With the fleshier varieties of fungi, much of the dramatic flushes of just a few months ago have long died and rotted back into their substrates. However, there are a few more durable species that persist around the year, although generally ones that tend to be overlooked because they are so ubiquitous, inedible, and, at first glance at least, not particularly interesting. Read more...
