FungiFriday: some small autumn offerings

Not many fungi on my hot dry little hill so the autumn rain gifted me a few to show off, mostly what we get are a few bracket fungi on dead wood and the occasional toadstool. The privet stumps are looking good and dead and a little decay should make them easier to remove, that's a task that's on the cards this winter.

I don't know what these are but they are lovely and velvety

The purple stuff may be a slime mould rather than a true fungus so I'll have to see how it progresses.

Split gill fungi remain very small in the hot sunny conditions although it looks like a fern may be germinating on the stump

These are happily growing in the central part, which is slightly shaded and engulfing the weeds

Damn, I missed these! Leftovers of Stinkdomes (Clathrus), a kind of stinkhorn that I posted about here. It's good to know that there is a spore bank of these, they seem to pop up every year in autumn, maybe I'll catch them in action again next year. These fungi complete their growth cycle within a couple of hours so you have to find them in the early morning to document them. By the afternoon, the fruiting is already completed and they have withered away. Take a look at the link I posted to see a fruiting cycle that I was lucky enough to photograph