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Photographer Guy Edwardes

Agency naturepl.com

THESE enchanting images look like illustrations from a book of fairy tales, but the magic is really that of the natural world of fungi.

The image above shows night falling on clusters of Mycena fungi – notable for their bell-shaped caps and their small size of only a few centimetres.

The amethyst deceiver (Laccaria amethystina) grows in the leaf litter of forests and is a key food source for fly larvae. It is edible for humans, but not considered a choice mushroom. Collectors must be careful to avoid the poisonous lilac fibrecap (Inocybe geophylla var. lilacina) that the amethyst deceiver resembles.

The image above is a variable oysterling fungus (Crepidotus variabilis) with its distinct kidney shapes, which grows on dead branches and isn’t edible. Below is the hallucinogenic but deadly fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), a species native to the northern hemisphere.

The shots come from a collection called by photographer . He took various images of the very different fungi growing near his home in Dorset, UK, highlighting the diversity of fungal species.

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