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If there’s something like an empire of mushrooms, this has got to be its emperor’s palace.

This has got everything for a mushroom lover’s heart:

- Sheathed woodtuft (Kuehneromyces mutabilis), the clustering yellow ones with the conical caps. A good, edible and common shroom.

- Hypholoma capnoides (the row of whiteish ones with black streaks along the rim). Hypholoma means “mushrooms with threads” because of the thread-like veil that connects the cap to the stem when young. Remains of this “thread” stick to the rim like a row of stitches.

- Psathyrella multipedata and Psathyrella piluliformis, both very common wood-rotting fungus in broadleaf woodlands, where it is found on and around the stumps of dead deciduous trees. I call them “Gollum Shrooms” because they look like the ones in the Hobbit film, y’know, when Bilbo falls down into Gollum’s cave, LOL.

- Trametes gibbosa, commonly known as the lumpy bracket, is a polypore mushroom that causes a white rot. It is found on beech stumps and the dead wood of other hardwood species. They are sometimes green on their upper sides due to algae growth.

- Xylaria filiformis, a small, tube or spike-like growth of blackish grey colour. It usually growns in regions above 500m and is quite rare.