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Thursday, 4 December 2014

Miniature gardens of a different sort

Last weekend I went for a walk on a nearby stretch of heathland - Velmead Common, on the outskirts of my home town, Fleet.



This is a great place to see fungi. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, of many different types. In this post I want to show you some of the smallest ones; the ones you have to look for really carefully.

Take this for example. Some tiny "mushrooms" growing on a fir-cone. The fir-cone itself was probably only 4 or 5 cm long:


I saw several similar ones:


But once you start looking, fungi and mosses are all around...


















Don't you think they look like miniature gardens?


To get idea of the scale of these fungi, just compare them to the size of a pine-needle, which you see in almost all of the photos, since this area of heath is thickly studded with pine trees:

7 comments:

  1. I've never seen them growing on pine cones before. I find fungi and moss fascinating, I wish I knew more about them.

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  2. I love moss. Well maybe not in MY garden, but in the woods.

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  3. Fascinating not to mention the image of you crawling about ib the ground.

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  4. Interesting, it's amazing to see new growth emerging from the damp, dead and decaying parts of nature.

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  5. Aren,t they just SO extraordinarily beautiful ? You have captured this so well ! : )

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  6. That is such a beautiful area! And the kinds of moss...I'm amazed at the variety found in your climate. Lovely photos!

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  7. Your pictures are presenting one of the beauty of nature. Thanks, Mark. :)

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