Winter Stalkball

While Alex was working in Stanground, I had a couple of hours at King's Dyke NR, which has been developed on one of the many former brick pits around Peterborough. I meandered up to the top of the hill  and was delighted to find a very large number of Winter Stalkball Tulostoma brumale, another new species of fungus for me.

Stalkballs are rather like puffballs on sticks, but are really quite tiny, with the gleba measuring less than 1cm across, so can easily be overlooked or mistaken for bleached snail shells or small pebbles. They're an autumn and winter species found among moss or short grass mainly on sandy, alkaline soil and are most frequently found by the coast, though recently I've seen several local inland records posted on social media.

As a new species to me, I had to give them pride of place in my journal, but I was also bewitched by the wonderful colours of the silver birch trees, the intense yellow-orange leaves contrasting perfectly with the purplish hue of the twigs (see extra).