Wrinkled Peach

Armed with information from my friend RC who works there, I went to Croome today to look for fungi, and spent several happy hours fossicking around in the shrubbery. I was only asked once if I needed any assistance, which I didn't (much), though I was pleased when RC joined me during his lunch break and took me to see a Common Bird's Nest, which I'd walked straight past about ninety minutes earlier, and would have walked past again, any number of times, if someone who knew what they were doing hadn't pointed it out to me.

Fair exchange is no robbery, and in return I showed RC some Wrinkled Peach I'd found, which he liked very much. Late in the afternoon he messaged me to say that he'd found another, so I scuttled off to meet him and take a look. And here it is - a bit grubby, but beautifully mature and wrinkled. Much like myself. So at the end of the day I'm still in RC's debt - not least because the mushroom was growing out of the end of a log, which he was holding up for me when I took this, so as to place it in the little available light there was left.

The Wrinkled Peach grows on rotting hardwood, and prefers recently felled wood in shaded areas that are prone to flooding. Its main hosts in the UK are elm, ash and horse chestnut, though it has also been found on rotting beech and oak, and it's currently on the Global Fungal Red List of threatened species because elm and ash are both in serious decline. A few years ago, after Dutch Elm Disease ravaged the elm population across the UK, the Wrinkled Peach took advantage of the carnage and enjoyed a period of being considered quite common, but it declined again as the felled elms rotted away. It's now so infrequently seen that the thirty or so specimens RC and I found between us today amount to a notable haul.