Jews ear fungus

A strange Saturday morning as I usually take Libby for a walk by the river across the playing fields …but not today or in the future.
I spent quite a while sorting my pots on the balcony and planting more allium bulbs and the self seeded forget me not plants.

This afternoon I went to Bushy Park for a Fungi walk. It was led by a real expert who had worked at Kew for many years but…….he had not done a recce and spent so long talking about each species that we did not really see a wide variety. However I have not thought much about fungi for many years ( I used to teach about them as part of Biology A level syllabus a long time ago) so it was good to revisit and when I got home I found my Fungi book which has excellent photographs. 
The photo is of an Auricularia called Jews ear…some parts really did look like ears not the usual mushroom shape. Some similar species are cultivated for food in China and South East Asia.
We also saw quite a few different bracket fungi growing on very old tree trunks. See extra I did not realise that some of these grow down by the roots and sometimes cause the tree to die. Another type we saw growing on a silver birch trunk (at a height of about 5 meters)  had caused the silver birch to die.