Autmun Lawn

 

The lawn at home is covered in somewhat unruly and ugly looking wild mushrooms as above.The fox which often enters the garden and forages ignores them as do so far after a week, the birds.

 The Times today has an interesting short article part of which reads:

This is an outstanding autumn for woodland fungi. It seems that the combination of summer heat and heavy September rain has generated an eruption of the fruiting bodies we know as mushrooms and toadstools. Naturalists with long memories may recall the same thing happening in the wet autumn of 1976.

The ancient woodland of Savernake Forest, in deepest Wiltshire, is alive with these fungi. The boles of some of the veteran beech trees there are encrusted with huge growths of the giant polypore Meripilus giganteus. More generally, honey fungi abound. These are nature’s decomposers, turning so-called “dead wood” into forest fertiliser.

The ground below stands of birch trees is studded with panther cap, blushers and fly agaric. Walk there with care, and delight — perhaps pondering how transformative it would be to encounter a hookah-smoking caterpillar on top of just one, as Alice did in her Wonderland. Best of all, the summer drought and the dry October have combined to ensure that few mushrooms and toadstools have been besmirched by slug damage (2025 has not been a good year for slugs or snails). This is the autumn to take up photographing fungi.

Trying to identify which variety of mushroom has sprouted on our  small patchy town lawn is proving difficult despite the photograph above. Some in the family wish the mushrooms and the lawn to be mowed away. 

I am puzzled by the fact that so many mushrooms have appeared on our lawn whereas those of neighbors seem unaffected. Presumably the spores were dropped by magpies, other birds or even or foxes  all of which abound in Wimbledon near to the Common.

Given The Times writer reports the large number of wild insects that can take refuge and thrive in mushrooms less deterred than is usual by larger species I am letting the mushrooms be for the time being.