![\"Lords](\"http:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/20140715_113520-Lords-and-Ladies-in-fruit-at-Madrix.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a>Amanita mairei<\/em> is an unusual Amanitopsis (Grisette) section toadstool in the mainly poisonous Amanita<\/em> genus. This one is found in mixed open woodland on sandy soil, exactly the case here, and a beautiful example of just how specialized our fungi are. How do 3,500 species of mushroom and toadstool share a continent? By specializing in different habitats, living with different plants. The volva, here partly eaten by slugs, is a whitish bag at the base, often buried in the soil. The stem is slightly fleecy, the cap convex and without an umbo, the little point often found in the middle.<\/p>\n Under the hot sun, I plant some more lavender, and some ornamental Sage (Salvia superba<\/em>) plants. They are soon visited by Large Skippers, bumblebees, a Hummingbird Hawkmoth.<\/p>\n On the way home down a quiet country lane, we stopped the car for a Hoopoe. It wandered unconcernedly along the road for some minutes, eventually flapping away with its distinctive ‘butterfly’ flight to a telegraph wire. A Kestrel landed on the same telegraph wire nearby, then hovered over some long grass.<\/p>\n At 7pm, a very large Violet Ground Beetle, Carabus violaceus, about 30mm long, splendidly iridescent with a blue-black gloss, clambered up the wall of the house.<\/p>\n A Blackcap treated us to late-season bursts of musical song, brief but fluty. A Great Green Bush-Cricket fluttered a foot over the lawn, legs trailing like a wading bird’s, its four wings beating hard to keep its long body airborne. And a Wall Butterfly visited what I’ll have to call the Butterfly Flowerbed with its mix of flowering lavenders and thyme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the moonlight, two Nightjars churr vigorously, competitively, their odd sewing-machine song continuing for minutes at a time, ending with a few chucks and wing-claps. In the morning, a Golden Oriole squawks and mews strangely from the woods. Amanita mairei is an unusual Amanitopsis (Grisette) section toadstool in the mainly poisonous Amanita genus. This one … Continue reading Dordogne – Amanita mairei (15 July 2014)<\/span> <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>