Young country diary: Bright or dull, fungi are my wonders of the woods | Fungi

My local nature reserve was once a Victorian rubbish tip, but is now teeming with wildlife. And if you look closely at old logs on a mild, damp day, you’ll probably see wonders: mushrooms.

I went to visit last week. Brightly colored leaves were painted on the forest floor and water droplets on some berries looked like diamonds. In winter and autumn, mushrooms are very common. At first I didn’t see many, but the deeper we went into the forest, the more we saw. They were all difficult to identify, but we managed it using a few nature books and Shroomify, an app that identifies mushrooms.

Here are a few: a foggy poisoned pie, glistening in the rain; smoky polypore, with a yellow underside and a black circle surrounded by a white ring; and honey mushrooms, with golden cream caps. One of the mushrooms, with a brown scaly cap, we weren’t sure, maybe it was a dark ball or a shaggy scaly cap. Later I discovered that the veiled poison pie could be poisonous, but Mexicans eat a lot of it; I also discovered that some species of honey mushrooms glow in the dark (this is called bioluminescence). And my grandmother thinks they’re a nuisance in the garden.

With mushrooms, sometimes you just look at an old, damp tree stump, and then you realize something is growing from it. Some mushrooms may have bright colors, while others may be dull. But I think all the mushrooms are magnificent.

Jasper, eight years old

Read today’s other YCD, from Julia, 14: “I kept an eye on the foxes”

The Young Country Diary submission form is still open for fall articles and closes at 10 p.m. on Sunday, November 2.