My local nature reserve was once a Victorian landfill but is now full of wildlife. And if you look closely at old logs on a warm, humid day, you'll likely see a miracle: mushrooms.
I went to visit last week. Bright leaves were painted on the forest floor, and water droplets on some of the berries looked like diamonds. In winter and autumn, mushrooms are very common. At first I didn't see much, but the deeper we went into the forest, the more we saw. They were all difficult to identify, but we managed to do it with the help of a couple of nature books and Shroomify, an app that identifies mushrooms.
Here are some of them: veiled poisonshiny from the rain; smoky polyporewith yellow at the bottom and a black circle with a white ring around it; And honey mushroomswith golden cream caps. One of the mushrooms with a brown scaly cap that we weren't sure about, it might have been dark raincoat or hairy scale. I later learned that the veiled poison cake can be poisonous, but is eaten a lot in Mexico; I also learned that some species of honey mushrooms glow in the dark (this is called bioluminescence). And my grandmother thinks that they are disturbing the garden.
When it comes to mushrooms, sometimes you just look at an old wet stump and then realize something is growing out of it. Some mushrooms may be brightly colored, while others may be dull in color. But I think All The mushrooms are beautiful.
Jasper, eight
Read today's other YCD episode from Julia, 14 years old:I'm following the foxes'
Diary of a young country submission form is still open for fall articles and closes at 10pm on Sunday 2nd November.
