More closely related to animals than plants, fungi are often overlooked. Beyond looking funky, they are engineers of the natural world, digesting dead plants and recycling their nutrients back into the soil for the next generation of life to grow.

Fungi also provide answers to human challenges. For example, our most used antibiotic is a type of fungus – penicillin. Meanwhile, some fungal networks have been found to break down plastics, offering a possible solution to plastic pollution. 

Ellen Winter, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust's Citizen Science & Evidence Officer and fungi fan, says that there is so much more that needs to be understood about the kingdom of fungi. 

“It’s amazing to be exploring wildlife we still know don’t know much about. With 14,000 species identified in the UK and counting, even beginners can record fungi new to the UK.”

This creates a welcoming environment for new learners, as people at all levels of expertise share their knowledge and finds.

If you start your journey to learn about fungi and even join your local mycology group – your records can make an important contribution citizen science, expanding upon our knowledge on the mysterious fungi kingdom. 

Here are five steps to exploring fungi this month:

1. Colour

Fungi appear in a rainbow of colours – from the bright reds of fly agaric, the red wine shades of purple brittlegill and the purple of amethyst deceivers and grass green of parrot waxcaps. Wood blewits are a wonder to spot, with their violet-blue hue, and rosy bonnets blush from the leaf litter.

Chicken of the woods and velvet shank are orange-yellow, while yellow field caps are a paler lemon shade. Yellow brain stays true to its name, a magnificent glowing yellow for fungi explorers to marvel at.

Meanwhile, many fungi are white, such as fairy fingers, ivory woodwax, porcelain fungus and destroying angel.

Most unusual is rotting wood stained deep blue green by green elf cup, the same colour as the tiny cup fungi it produces.

2. Smell

Many fungi can be identified by scent alone. Aniseed, radish, coconut, potato, sulphur, almonds, crab... these are just some of the smells you may come across. 

For example, the aniseed funnel is named for its strong and pervasive smell.

Stinkhorn and devils fingers are notoriously stinky, smelling like rotting flesh to attract flies.

You may be lucky enough find, the coconut milkcap, which has a coconut scent more coconutty than an actual coconut.

3. Shape 

Marvel the fantastic variety of shapes that fungi can appear in.

The ‘cap-and-stem' shape is what most people visualise a mushroom to be, but fruiting bodies can also appear as puffballs- like the huge giant puffballs or common earth balls (which look a bit like potatoes).

Other shapes to look for are:

• brackets – such as turkeytail
• trumpets - like horn-of-plenty
• crust – such as cobalt crust
• clubs and corals - like tiny candlesnuff fungus
• cups – wood ears on elder trees
• star shaped. In Gloucestershire, we have a flagship population of earth star fungi. However, they often grow hidden beneath leaf litter, so even the keenest fungi-finders are unlikely to see them.

4. Size

Fungi vary hugely by size – take, for example, collared parachutes. Found on tiny twigs and dead leaves these miniature marvels are triumphs of nature’s engineering.

Larger fungi include the giant puffball, which can reach the size of a small sheep, and like the hard as nails southern bracket, which eats large trees – very slowly.

5. Habitat 

Fungi can grow just about anywhere. Considering where you saw the fungus will help you figure out what sort of species it is. 

Ask yourself these questions: Is it growing on wood (tree trunks, branches and stumps)? Is it growing on grassland, directly out of the soil - or even out of faeces?

Many fungi grow out of deadwood, and here at Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust we support this vital habitat through Dead Wood Society – part of our Severn Treescapes project. Visit our website or join a workshop to learn about deadwood, fungi and the world of wildlife they support at www.gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk/dead-wood-society. 

You can also contribute to knowledge of local fungi by going out, spotting them and recording your findings with the Gloucestershire Centre for Environmental Records (GCER) at www.gcer.co.uk. 

When exploring the world of fungi, please remember to do so with care. Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust recommends that although fungi are safe to be touched, pleasedo not pick or damage them. Leave them behind for wildlife instead – they are crucial for soil health, and provide food for wild animals such as dormice, birds and insects.

Please remember to stick to paths so that fungi can thrive – hikers’ boots straying off track can wear and compact sensitive soil and leaf litter.