A rolling stone gathers no moss

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At this time of year there is precious little of interest in my garden about which to write, so I am unashamedly going to use more material from my walk along the Basingstoke Canal last weekend.
I have written already about the scenery and the plants and fungi, so how about mosses and lichens?

I came off the canal towpath at Stacey’s Bridge: (built 1792; re-built 1975)

The bridge probably used to carry a road, but these days there is only a muddy footpath between the two crumbling walls of mellow brick:

The tops of the walls are covered in moss:

Close inspection of the wall reveals a multitude of different mosses, lichens and fungi:

After crossing the bridge and beginning to head homewards along the leafy lane which runs parallel to the canal, I noticed more and more mosses. In fact, almost every surface was covered in some sort of growth.

There were several big upright stones like this. I suppose they are ancient boundary-markers of some sort. I can’t believe anyone would have put them there just for the fun of it. Each one must weigh at least a ton!

This is a close-up of the surface of one of those stones – deeply pitted. It looks rather like a piece of wood that had been repeatedly attacked by a Woodpecker!

This is a deep hollow in the “crook” of a tree. It collects rainwater and is therefore more or less permanently moist, so it supports its own patch of moss.

I peered inside this hole in the trunk of another big old tree.

There was a miniature lake inside…

This is a close-up of moss growing on a tree. It looks to me just like bushes on a rocky mountainside.

This moss is growing on a log in the car-park where I left my car. You can tell it was cold that day – there was still thick frost on the log at half-past three, despite the sunny afternoon.

Finally for today, I want to publish another photo of a fungus I saw last weekend, for which I now have a positive identification:

This is “Tremella Mesenterica” aka “Witches Butter” and “Yellow Brain Fungus”. Thanks to @mouseinthewood on Twitter, for the ID. If you are interested in fungi or foraging in general, it’s worth following him.

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