Country diary: the magic of magpie inkcaps

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: These mushrooms are outrageously exhibitionist, and bring to mind an old song “One for sorrow, two for joy” goes the old magpie rhyme, but these are not birds, these are mushrooms – Coprinopsis picacea, the magpie inkcap. There have been changes since the last time I walked this path between field and wood: a new wire fence erected, low-sweeping branches of an old oak lopped, debris and scrub cleared, pasture tidied and improved. In a patch where somet