A Fungal Foray led by Dr Eirene Williams – 19 Oct 2025
Despite having been postponed twice due to bad weather we had a very good turnout for our Fungal Foray on Sunday afternoon, led by Dr Eirene Williams. Despite the weather being very damp and misty when we arrived, the sun came out about halfway round and it turned into a beautiful, warm autumn afternoon.
We set off from the car park at St Nectan’s Church in Stoke, armed with trays to collect examples of the fungi we encountered on our walk. We covered several different types of habitat including the Churchyard, an old lane between steep banks, a grassy field and deciduous woodland before heading back up alongside another grassy field. Perhaps not surprisingly the sunken lane and particularly the woodland yielded the greatest number and variety of fungi. There were a lot fewer in the field and other open areas, probably down to the dry spell of weather we had had over the previous couple of weeks.
We proceeded in a slightly disorderly fashion, with some people intrepidly exploring at a distance from the main group, climbing up and down steep slopes to reach particularly interesting-looking fungi while others kept fairly close together. Eirene was kept very busy both searching for and pointing out fungi as we walked and also identifying the various specimens that other people had found. Fortunately, we all managed to get back to the churchyard at the end with our finds, and Eirene did not need to blow her whistle once!
We then proceeded to lay out all the samples we had collected on a couple of tables, divided into 2 main groups of gilled and non-gilled fungi and then into various subgroups according to similarity. Eirene named most of them, although there were a few that she took home to investigate further before she could accurately identify them.
Eirene has provided a complete list of all the species we found this time
Clare has added this information to the list from the previous fungal foray in 2023.
These are included below
