Snowy Ink-cap

It was a glorious sunny day, so I decided to abandon report-writing and do some botanical recording round the village of Carlby, just north of Stamford. Although I've visited the area previously, I found many new species, which demonstrates that botanical recording is worthwhile at almost any time of year!

A surprising number of plants were still just about flowering, though the cold weather predicted for the coming week may  stop that. There were also a few fungi about, including a field full of snowy inkcaps, with one or more on virtually every cow-pat in an otherwise rather boring improved grass field. The generic name Coprinopsis indicates that this mushrooms genus is similar to the genus Coprinus, which literally means 'living on dung' - that's true of quite a few of the inkcaps and particularly apt for this species. The specific epithet nivea comes from the Latin word for snowy - niveus. Living in a largely arable part of the world, this isn't a species I see very often. It looked particularly attractive beaded with heavy dew.