Woodpile wonders - garden fungi

Woodpile wonders - garden fungi

Most of us with woodburners or an open fire will have a woodpile or log store located somewhere within the garden.  A well organised stack of logs can be a work of art but can also become a welcome home for mammals and insects.  Mice, hedgehogs, wrens, worms, beetles, woodlice, and snakes have all made homes in our log pile at some point.  This month it was the turn of fungi to make use of our well seasoned timber. 

Fungi reproduce from spores, a quite ancient method of reproduction that first emerged on earth approximately 470 million years ago.  What is amazing is that fungal spores are incredibly widespread and ubiquitous in our atmosphere.  They occur from ground level up to the stratosphere 20+ kilometers above Earth and they occur in areas ranging from rainforests to the polar regions.  Their concentrations vary dramatically however.  In urban areas there are 1,000-10,000 per cubic meter and in more vegetated regions their numbers can be up to 100 times higher.  Usually feeding off dead or decaying plant material, some have also adapted to feeding off living plant or animal tissues.  It’s even estimated that we can breathe in as many as 100,000 spores a day.

It’s at the base of our fuel store that some of these wind blown tourists eventually fell and developed into the fruiting bodies we see as fungi or mushrooms.  In this case it was an example of the glistening inkcap, Coprinellus micaceus, a mushroom commonly seen in broadleaved UK woodlands, but also a world traveller that can be found in parts of Asia, Australia, and South America. 

Wildlife in the garden - collared doves

We love collared doves. They’re often around the garden grazing under the bird feeders and the margins of the surrounding fields.  Barely known in the UK prior to the 1950s,...
Read More

Modern heroes of horticulture - Adam Kirtland

Adam Kirtland is a gardener who has surged onto the gardening scene in recent years with his informative, relatable, and often incredibly witty Instagram account that offers advice from making...
Read More

Gardeners' notes - what to do in August

Propagate clematis Many clematis will have flowered by now and you may have spotted a particularly good performer in your own or a friend’s garden.  Now is a good time...
Read More