I ALWAYS get excited as spring draws near, particularly as it is a wonderful time for wild flower spotting.
If, like me, you always seem to walk along the same bit of land, whether it is in either a nature reserve or even along the same piece of wild hedgerow, then this can be a great place to begin learning about flowers.
Starting in February, you get to see the first signs of colour of the new year and as there are probably just one or two different blooms it is not such an onerous job to look these up in a wild flower field guide.
With the passing of each week new flowers reveal themselves as they come into bloom.
I am always amazed just how different an area can look as the different wild flowers add their own shades of colour to the landscape.
Once we arrive in September through the chances of encountering a new bloom are remote. However, it is far from time to stop your vigil as the wetter weather of September brings out blooms of an entirely different nature.
Mushrooms and toadstools are what we call the fruiting bodies of fungi. If you like, the bit we see is the fungi equivalent of a flower.
The main body of the fungus is actually composed of fine, thread-like structures, which weave together into cotton wool-like masses known as the mycelium. You can see this in some fungi when you peel away a piece of bark from a rotting log.
In other species, this is inter-woven in the soil or inter-connects with the roots of trees.
In recent years, thanks to genetic testing it has been possible to prove that the fruiting bodies of a species of fungi appearing in one area of a wood are from the same species as those fruiting bodies appearing some 500m away.
From this and further experiments it was determined that in some cases individual fungi can be truly enormous organisms. Now when asked: "What is the largest living thing on earth?", the answer is not a blue whale, or even a giant redwood, but a fungus.
At the moment, the largest discovery of some 3.5 miles across is a honey fungus, found in a wood in Oregon, USA.
On Sunday, the Wyre Forest District Council Ranger Service will be leading a Fungal Foray into the woods at Habberley Valley, starting at the car park at 2pm.
I can't promise what will be found, as new fungi will be coming into bloom on a daily basis at this time of year, but in the past there have been some wonderful finds on this event.
Probably the most spectacular was an alien-looking earth star mushroom which even attracted the attentions of mycologists in Kew Gardens.
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