Mushrooms Are Back

It seems the recent wet weather has spurred the mushrooms to pop up. I'm trying to learn the varieties that are in my wood with the aid of a couple of books. It's a tricky business for sure. This one I think is a Larch Bolete.

There were plenty about and pretty big too. The Boletus family have a distinctive chunky shape and don't have gills underneath the cap but tubes instead. It gives them a sponge-like texture. I found them on the track next to my neighbour's stand of larch, which is where they get the common name of Larch Bolete given there
tendency to appear near that particular tree. Hence I think I've got the this identification right. The next are ones I've seen a lot in the wood. I think these are Sulphur Tufts but there seems to be a few things resembling these in the books so I'm not certain.

Lastly I found this funnel shaped mushroom that has me stumped right now. I found a few last year too.

I've read that taking a spore print is one way to help identification. This simply involves leaving the
mushroom cap on a piece of paper overnight to collect the spores released. It's the colour that is important. Varieties that might look visually very similar might have completely different spore colour. So I've given it a go.



The resulting spore print was brown for the bolete, which is as expected, but the funnel shaped one just dried up.





I'll keep my eye out for any further varieties as no doubt autumn will encourage many more to appear. Maybe I'll also take a spore print of the Sulphur Tufts, which should be purple to black, to see if that will help positively identify them.