Photos from Den Haag

The internet is a wonderful thing. Eric and I have joined several "meet people" sites around the 'net, and thus met Chris and Elke. They live in Den Haag -- that's The Hague for the Americans. Den Haag is a beautiful town in and of itself. It's got a couple of neat museums and a castle or two, but it was such a beautiful day that we decided to go walking in the forests North of Den Haag.

This little purple guy appears to be VERY common. This example was about 3cm (1 1/2 inches) tall, growing in the grass and moss next to a gravel trail. Update: The species has been identified as Laccaria amathystea.

You can see that the gills are rather widely spaced. This would be typical of a Marasmius, but I have no idea if that's what this is. In fact, I think maybe Marasmius only have white gills. Oh well.

A pair of Amanitas. I do not have a good guess as to the species. It certainly could be one of the several white Amanitas called "Destroying Angels" - beautiful, meaty white mushrooms that will kill you very dead indeed if you eat them.

This is one of the stalked puffballs. I don't know which one. Some of these are edible, some are not. Many species of puffball are edible when young - in other words, when their interior flesh is a pure fiberous white. At the first hint of yellow tinge, they start to develop a bitter taste. Within a few days the white flesh will dissolve into a greenish goo, which is actually a primordial soup of developing spores. As time passes the mushroom will dry out, and the goo will turn to dust. A hole will form in the top of the mushroom, and any passing breeze or boot will release a puff of spores through the hole. This is how the mushroom spreads its spores, and they're loads of fun to play with. Puffing a puffball just helps it to spread its spores around, so this is one that, once it's in the puffing stage, you can kick to your heart's content.

Ooh, I like those kind, said Elke, spotting this collection of bracket fungi on a dead log. These are of the turkeytail type, and they are decidedly beautful. This photo is a bit blurry, but I've included it for Elke anyway. We'll get a better photo next time.

On the same log were these little guys. They might be a younger version of their cousins on the other side of the log, but I don't think so. They were quite soft and pliable for bracket fungi, with a lovely down of fine white hairs over the top. This cluster was about 4cm in diameter in total; each individual mushroom was about 2cm diameter.

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