'No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - No-vember'. Thomas Hood might have been a famous poet but he was a rotten naturalist. The autumnal leaf-scape of Savemake is, as ever, awesome in its vibrancy, and, as for fruits, I can't remember a richer crop of wild apples. Horse chestnuts, too, managed to produce plenty of conkers, despite having their leaves turned brown early by countless mining moth larvae (the appropriately named ohridella - small and 'orrid). As I write, the glitter of raindrops on leaves in the low afternoon sun resembles light on the wave, or a galaxy of stars.
In spite of weeks of perfect mild and damp October weather, the expected bonanza of fungi never really happened. I have seen fewer than average numbers here and in Savernake, although the strip of grass leading up to the Surgery had the usual sprouting of milk caps, 'so-called because they leak milky juice when cut. Like many 'mushrooms', these grow on the roots of trees, invisible underground until the few brief weeks in autumn when they push up the fruit bodies containing their spores (the fungal equivalent of seeds). Rotten logs and stumps have been the best habitat this year. Three scarce fungi I found at Savernake were all on the same tree - the rotting hulk of a goat willow, still sprouting a fine head of leaves even though its trunk was not only hollow but splitting open.
It has been a 'good', i.e. bad, year for honey-fungus, a brown, scaly toadstool that appears in dense masses around rotting tree stumps. Unfortunately, it is one of the few that will kill healthy trees, especially planted ones. It infects the roots and will eventually cause the death of the tree, although some trees are more susceptible than others. It is one reason why planted trees are not a good substitute for natural ones: being nursery grown and perhaps under environmental stress, they are much more vulnerable to diseases.
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