Recent rain has encouraged a wonderful crop of fungi to grow across our greenspaces: popping up in grassy areas, clinging to branches, and sprouting from dead treestumps.

Autumn is a great time to take a closer look at some of the more curiously named mushrooms, which wouldn’t appear out of place in a spooky story. While many of you may be familiar with the field mushroom, not every fungus has that regular shape with stem and cap, and they come in many other colours than brown.

Did you know, from a scientific perspective, there’s no difference between a toadstool and a mushroom. People tend to use the word toadstool to refer to fungi that are toxic, poisonous, or simply inedible, while mushroom is used to describe tasty and edible fungi. It can be very difficult to identify different types though, so it is never a good idea to pick and eat wild fungi. Besides being poisonous, many are also protected species.

Keep your eyes open when walking around the Medway towns – all the photos here were taken in local woods, parks and greenspaces.