Earthstar

On the day that Philae was landing on a comet billions of miles away, I was looking at earthstars studding the sand dunes at Ainsdale.

I said to knottman2 last week that I had never blipped a fungus (though I remembered afterwards that a couple of years ago there had been an emergency blip of a little mushroom growing in a plant pot in our garden). So I thought it was time I did (again).

Anyway, I hadn't been to Ainsdale near Southport in 12 years. I was there today with a group of colleagues, and we were discussing issues that were all too familiar from my time down there all those years ago. But we did have a stroll over the dunes after lunch, and saw a remarkable diversity of fungi. I had only seen earthstars once before, I believe this one is Geastrum triplex, the collared earthstar - though I may be wrong.

Backblipped on 14 November, back later to blip one from today.