Ireland day 0866. Sunday 11 February 2024- Cedar Cup *

Ireland day 0866. Sunday 11 February 2024- Cedar Cup

Today’s summary	Spent the morning cleaning the flat and doing the shopping in anticipation of Val’s return. Picked her up from the airport about 12:30 then after lunch we walked round the demesne. Saw a magnificent rainbow and curious Cedar Cup fungi at the end
Today’s weather	Mostly dry and sunny with just a brief shower mid afternoon. Light westerly wind. Appx 8c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Cedar Cup walk with Val

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

With Val having been away for four nights and just me inhabiting the flat, as you can imagine it wasn’t looking its cleanest or tidiest this morning. So given that she was coming back this lunchtime, as soon as I surfaced this morning, I set about hoovering and mopping up the tea-stains from the kitchen floor. I also thought she probably wouldn’t appreciate beans on toast for lunch and dinner, so I went to the shops, too, to pick up something a bit more imaginative . (In the end we had mackerel salad for lunch which was very nice and roast lamb shanks for dinner, which promise to be excellent – even though I say so myself).

Her flight arrived back from London on time at 12:30 so I collected her from the airport – a process that took longer than usual as everywhere was, for some reason, very busy – and made our way back to the flat. Once we’d had the salad and caught up on all the news, we decided to go on a quick walk to get some fresh air. It was a pleasant sunny day when we went out, so there were lots of people about, but it was a very enjoyable stroll round the demesne despite the abundance of co-walkers.

Towards the end, a light shower passed by and although we didn’t really get wet, it was enough to create a magnificent double rainbow hanging right over the playing fields. But that wasn’t the main excitement of our walk – that came right at the end, as we were almost back at the flat. I happened to glance down and noticed what I thought at first was some discarded litter underneath the cedar tree my the gates to our flats. I bent down to have a closer look and realised it was something altogether more interesting – it was a small brownish sphere half buried in the earth that looked a bit an exploded ping pong ball.

Neither of us had any idea what it was but google reverse image search came to our rescue and identified the object as the fruiting body of the Cedar Cup fungus. It’s not harmful to the plant, apparently, and it is a relatively common symbiote of the cedar tree . I’d never seen it before probably because there aren’t all that many cedar trees around, and also because the fungus is quite well disguised in the soil. So all in all it was a very interesting and enjoyable walk, and it’s great to have Val back again. Now I better get on and finish making dinner!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Proud gardener with her hellebores!	Colourful celandines popping up in the verges

An attractive clump of small “wild” cyclamen was growing amongst the trees around the outside of the demesne (though I suspect this one is probably a garden escape)	Still looking quite wintry along the perimeter path

Sun heading for evening in the rain-washed demesne late this afternoon	Cedar Cup fungus, Geopora sumneriana. It grows exclusively on the roots of cedar trees and true to form, this specimen (one of many) was underneath a large cedar tree in the grounds of our flats. As far as I can tell, it is symbiotic with the host tree, and doesn’t harm it (though it is harmful to humans that try to eat it). I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before so this was a notable “first” for me

This spectacular double rainbow appeared towards the end of our walk – and we didn’t even get wet!